Exquisite Void
by The-Lesser-of-two-Goods
Summary: A boy's life as he knows it bends and distorts when his cozy, rural town is destroyed and his best friend disappears. Caught up in the mission of a ragtag group of teenagers, he struggles against the darkness plaguing the universe, the darkness within his heart, and the piece of himself he can't lock away behind a tough exterior forever.
1. Preface

**(A/N: Yep, another one. Mostly, I'm working on a serious piece of fiction that I've just lost my drive to complete (at 2/3rds of the way through…) and I'm hoping some fun fanfiction will help reignite that fire.**

 **A few housekeeping items before we get started:**

 **1\. This is not a serious piece of fiction. You're free to leave reviews and the like, but please remember that this is purely for fun. I'll consider constructive criticism in use for my serious writing, but don't really expect this specific fanfiction to change based on the advice you give me.**

 **2\. I don't have any plans to include any of the original KH cast in this fanfiction; I'm just stealing the KH universe. If that's not what you're looking for, sorry! I had my fill of writing Kairi/Sora/Riku and the rest of the gang a long time ago. There might be cameos or references here, but, as of this moment, I'm not expecting to include the characters in the greater narrative.**

 **3\. I include song lyrics before every chapter (it's just my jam), and I highly recommend you listen to the song while you read the chapter, because it helps to set the scene! Even the whole album it comes from would work (with the exception of, at least, the preface).**

 **Alright, hope you enjoy my latest pile of trash!)**

 **PREFACE**

Shinobi Lite, "Memories"

The little towheaded boy didn't know it at the time (and how could he?) as he struggled to keep his sweaty palms steady on the monkey bars and kick his feet away from the plastic platform that the kid with the wild, brown hair, freckles, and silvery eyes would be his guardian angel.

He had been sitting on a swing since he arrived, not really swinging, but not sitting still, either. His mother, a lovely woman with curly, dark locks, a tall, thin frame, and the longest fingers Silas had ever seen was mostly chatting with the other mothers over by the bench, her anxious gaze flickering back toward her son every minute or so behind thick, circular glasses.

She was visibly younger than Silas's mom, with no real wrinkles to speak of and not a single gray hair. While she couldn't have been much older than his half-sister, she was, unquestionably, the brunet boy's mother.

Silas was at his dad's house, as he usually was. His mom could only see him on the weekends, for reasons Silas didn't quite understand. Most kids' parents lived together, but Silas's never did. They said they were never married.

The tall, sturdy man with a thick mustache and pink lips contoured by faint laughter lines mostly pretended to read his paper at the bench he chose, separate from all of the mothers. He was always shy about being the only father at the park.

A combination of the hot, sticky humidity and his own self-consciousness turned his hands into oil slicks. Silas was able to go all the way around the monkey bars twice last week, and couldn't understand why he couldn't do it, now. He wanted so badly to blame it on the strange boy, staring at him from the swings.

But he couldn't, because as soon as his left hand dropped, the boy had darted up from his seat and barreled toward the monkey bars. By the time the slippery ring finger on his right hand finally gave way and his body dropped to the ground, the silver-eyed boy was beneath him, and broke his fall.

It was a reckless move that helped no one. The stranger's lower lip was cut into as his lower teeth jabbed downward from impact. Silas dislocated his right index finger and had to wear a cast for six weeks and learn to write with his left hand. The boy's mom and Silas's dad each rushed over to the scene and they carpooled to the hospital. Neither boy would dare look at the other on the car ride there.

The only hospital taking emergency visits was this shoddy little place on the other side of town. They were able to take both Silas and his "savior" in at the same time, and the boys sat one bed away from each other, with the dividers pulled back. Only when the elderly nurse was applying a topical numbing agent to the stranger's lip did Silas dare to look over at him. He looked back and smiled this goofy half-smile, his eyes two crescent moons beneath thick, black lashes.

They were inseparable ever since.


	2. Chapter I - Saut Dans le Vide

**(A/N: Here we are! Chapter one. I'm uploading this at the same time as the preface, as I wrote them together. So, nothing really to say! Dive in. Hope it's at least entertaining!)**

 **CHAPTER I**

 **SAUT DANS LE VIDE**

 _Love, love is the warmest color.  
Petrol blues, hallelujah, hallelujah, comes.  
Saut dans le vide, my lover.  
In my youth, the greatest tide washed up my prize:  
You._

Alt-J, "Nara"  
 _This is All Yours_

Like most things in his life, Nico didn't plan for this.

He didn't plan to be woken up at two in the morning before graduation day, back drenched in sweat and heart palpitating, to a crash of thunder just outside his house. The rain bore down on the window next to his bed with such intensity and swiftness that he could barely make out the shed outside, painted a flaking red with a white roof, weathered by the elements.

The tree branch with his childhood tire swing had been entirely obliterated by (what must have been) a bolt of lightning, and laid horizontally against the grass, the milky rope coiled limply atop the dark tire. That branch hung on by barely a splinter of wood to the trunk of the tree.

Something small and black shuffled around outside by the edge of the shed.

 _Bailey_.

He certainly didn't plan for the dog to somehow claw her way through the flimsy, boarded-up doggy door (which Nico _knew_ he should have done himself) and meander out into a thunderstorm. She was usually a little scaredy-cat when it came to the rain, refusing to even pee outside when it wasn't so much as drizzling out. Maybe he didn't have the highest opinion of his stepdad's mutt, but there was no way she could be that dumb.

Nico quickly threw on yesterday's shirt and jeans, shoved neatly into the corner of his room, and jogged down the steps, trying to keep a light gait so as to not wake up his mom and Arnold. Not only was his mother probably still a little drunk, but his stepdad would probably throw a fit and begin hammering the doggy door closed again, and Nico actually planned to go back to sleep after this nonsense.

He finally reached the back door and kneeled down to tie his right sneaker. A cold nose prodded at his elbow. Without really thinking about it, Nico reached over and scratched the dog behind her ear as he put on his left shoe.

Nico stopped before he could even make the first loop of his shoelaces.

Bailey sniffed at his hair, her stupid tail wagging back and forth, smacking the side of the house as though she wanted to see just how loud she could get before mommy and daddy woke up. Nico's eyes fell to the doggy door: Arnold's shoddy boarding job was intact. Not a single nail was loose.

"Coyote?" he whispered to Bailey. Predictably, she didn't respond.

He stood, and glanced outside the window. As expected, it wasn't quite clear enough to see through, but there was definitely a black mass hanging out in the backyard. It was probably too small to be a dog, and was twitching violently. Nico thought he caught a glimpse of two golden eyes, reflecting light back towards him.

A cat, maybe? Cats hate water. It would make sense.

Nico would have turned around and gone right back to bed, irked after having woken up and gotten riled up for nothing, if three panicked knocks hadn't sounded from the other side of the house. His eyes flickered back out the door, but he only saw shadows.

He would recognize that honk anywhere; they both had phones and could easily call each other, but Silas preferred to honk. Nico's working theory was that he did that to get Nico out the door faster, as he would try to leave the house before his mother and stepdad stumbled down the stairs, grumbling and angry.

It worked. He jogged, as silently as possible, across the living room and to the front door. Bailey sprinted to keep up, the tinking and jingling of her dog tags only adding to the ruckus. He snatched a black umbrella from the cylindrical holder by its curved, wooden handle, and opened the front door only wide enough to slip out in front of Bailey, who whined when she realized she wasn't going for a walk. "Tomorrow, okay?" he whispered to the dog before closing the door.

Nico glanced upwards. His mom's light was on. Silas honked again.

He opened the umbrella and jogged down the long driveway, closing it as he slid into the front seat of Silas's pickup.

"You _are_ awake," he said, throwing the truck into reverse.

Nico paused to put his seatbelt on. "What would you have done if I wasn't?"

"Waited." Silas paused. "Why are you awake?"

He scoffed back at his childhood friend. "Why are _you_ awake, dude? We have to be up at, like, eight tomorrow."

"Can't sleep," Silas mumbled.

Upon further examination, Nico decided he was telling the truth. His usually smooth and styled dirty blond hair was sticking out at all ends, and purples and blues bruised him beneath his dark brown eyes. It was then that he remembered Silas used to have this unreasonable fear of thunderstorms; he wasn't hiding under the bed from them anymore, but clearly their grip on him hadn't quite loosened.

Anyone else would have ignored the request to go out at two in the morning before an early start the next day, but easily Nico's biggest weakness was his inability to deny Silas anything he wanted. As much as he wanted to sleep, he wanted to make his friend happy just a little bit more.

They drove down the empty, rural road for a good minute without saying anything. The radio was off, and the only sound was the rapid sliding of the windshield wipers as they struggled to slap away the rain. Silas's brights were turned on, illuminating the old, cracked pavement.

"Something doesn't feel right," Silas finally said, his fingers tightening around the steering wheel.

It was a good thing Silas was driving, Nico thought, because it usually calmed him down. Something was really winding him up tonight. "It's just because we're graduating tomorrow," he told him.

"I don't think so," Silas said.

Nico sighed, and opened Silas's center console. He dug through a few fast food receipts and handwritten addresses before feeling something smooth and cool. Next to it was the unmistakable texture and weight of a plastic lighter. Grabbing both, he put the bowl and lighter in his lap as he searched the glove compartment for Silas's baggie.

"Did I offer?" he half-laughed when he saw what his friend was doing.

"It's for you, not me," murmured Nico. "You need to calm down."

As he broke apart the little bits of green herb from inside the plastic baggie and placed it in the glass pipe, a thought came to him, and he paused. "You're not upset I'm leaving town, are you?" he asked.

"Shut the fuck up. No, I'm not."

"Because I'll be less than an hour away," Nico said, letting the paraphernalia rest in his lap. "And I'll visit constantly."

"Stop."

"You'll get so sick of me."

"Shut the fuck up," repeated Silas, a grin tugging on the corners of his lips. "It's not that. Really. Something just feels weird about tonight."

Nico took a minute to stuff full the piece. It was a cool looking thing that Silas's dad got for him when he was on a trip with his girlfriend: originally clear with golden specks throughout, heavy usage darkened the pipe to a bronze-black, but the specks still glittered through the glass, like golden geodes on a cave wall.

"You okay?" Nico asked, handing Silas the pipe, "health-wise?"

"Yeah, just—"

" _Watch out!_ "

Nico had no idea how it got there, but that fucking cat from his backyard had somehow ran all this way and dove in front of Silas's car. Its jerking, shuddering black body blended perfectly in against the pouring rain, and two glowing, yellow orbs shone back at them. It didn't have ears like a cat's, but what looked like long antennae.

Nico couldn't get a good look as Silas slammed on his brakes. The car swiveled around the cat and screeched, and he could barely get a grasp on the handle of the roof. He felt his seatbelt cutting into his clavicle, and was hit with the pungent, skunky smell of weed as every little green bit flew out of the pipe on a swerve. The tires made a scratchy sound as they struggled to find friction on the road.

Silas twisted the wheel as far left as he could to stop from driving the truck right into the dip on the side of the road, and braked quickly, sliding into the other lane until he was perpendicular with the yellow dividing line.

"What the hell was that?" Silas asked.

Nico tried to respond, but no words came out. Instead, he grabbed his umbrella and threw open the truck's door. The wind nearly shut him in; in only the five minutes since they'd left, the storm had grown more violent. Even the sky was colored a violent indigo, a vortex with a black core that was somehow blacker than all the black surrounding it.

Rain pummeled down on his umbrella with frightening intensity. Nico half-considered retreating back into the truck and having Silas take him home, but knew the cat needed help. "Come on," he said through the open door.

Silas's eyes were wide, and scared. He tried to blink away the expression, but Nico knew him better than that and wouldn't be fooled. He wasn't coming out of the storm. He feared the lightning would strike him.

"I'll be right back," he said instead, and closed the door behind him.

It was about fifty feet behind them, and hadn't moved. Silas was successful in avoiding the creature, but part of Nico thought maybe it should have died. With the rapid twitching and convulsing, there was no way that cat was healthy enough to go on living. A film formed in Nico's throat when he thought he might have to kill the cat.

"It's fine," Silas shouted from the open window. "Leave it be."

Any other day, Nico would have listened to him, but today was different. Nico _knew_ he saw that cat before, at an impossible distance, only a few minutes ago. He jogged up to the cat, fighting against the wind that would knock him on his side. Only when Nico made it to ten feet away from the cat was when he realized it wasn't a cat at all.

This had to be a bug, or a demon, or something else entirely. Not only was it standing on two feet (which were much too big for its size), it had black claws on human-shaped hands, perfectly circular, yellow eyes on a huge head, and long, bent antennae.

It wasn't alone.

Another one of those black creatures popped up out of the woodwork; it literally seemed to form from the shadows on the pavement and emerge, like a crocodile out of water.

"Silas," Nico said in a half-shout, unconvinced that his friend would come out of the truck, even if he _could_ hear him. Anyway, he was almost positive he was dreaming. What are the odds of so much weirdness happening in one night?

It didn't end there. Another black creature erupted from the pavement, followed by another, then another. There were ten to twelve of them before Nico could even gather himself and, as if driven by some primal need, they all darted after him, clawing, writhing.

"Stay back!" he warned, as though something so savage could ever comprehend his words, collapsing his umbrella and pointing it at the horde. This didn't faze them at all, not to Nico's surprise. When one jumped toward him, he jabbed outward with his umbrella, but somehow missed. Guarding himself with his arm in a last-ditch effort, he felt sharp claws ripping at the skin of his bicep.

The cuts were deep. Blood pooled at the surface of his skin, but was almost instantly washed away by the downpour. The pink-tinged rain dripped from his arm to the pavement, but was lost among the puddles on the ground. Nico couldn't feel any pain—not with such adrenaline coursing through his veins. He whacked again at the same creature and knew—just _knew_ —he should have made contact, but felt nothing. It passed through the animal like thin air.

"I'm dreaming," he reminded himself.

Another creature approached, slowly, like a wild animal stalking its prey. Nico was sure he would suffer a heart attack right there, in the middle of Umber Drive, and the next day, an unsuspecting truck driver would find him, face-down in yesterday's rain, body engorged from drowning in a measly two inches of water.

Until his umbrella glowed.

After a long while in relative darkness, any intense light is absolutely blinding. For what felt like too long, Nico saw only spots of varying color, and was certain he would never see again. Slowly, he could make out the black creatures—farther away now than they had been—with their glowing yellow eyes, blurred by the rapidly pouring rain.

Nico wasn't holding his umbrella anymore.

What could only be described as a comically large key replaced it. A hilt surrounded the very end, which he held, each side meeting at the tips to form a teardrop (or perhaps a raindrop) shape. One side of the hilt was wrapped in a white ribbon of some kind, which seemed to float in the air as it slowly spiraled around the length of the key, which graduated from a deep black color at the hilt to a pale gray near the teeth. The key's teeth themselves were long and sharp, like a rake's, and seemed to emit light. Near the very tip of the key were two arrows moving along their own axis, each emerging from a ring around an arrow pointing upwards, like a weathervane. A small chain dangled from the very end, where he held the key, with a miniature compass rose at the end.

It was the most bizarre thing Nico ever held.

Whatever it was, these things didn't seem to like it.

"The fuck was that?"

Nico wasn't sure which sight was stranger: a dangerous-looking, giant key appearing in his hands, or Silas willingly weathering the storm without his truck's roof (or so much as an umbrella) to protect him. His hair browned from the wetness and curtained over his eyes.

"I don't know," Nico finally said, returning his attention to the black creatures. They got over whatever it was about the key that made them hesitate, and lunged again at Nico. They seemed to, more or less, ignore Silas completely, choosing instead to overwhelm the brunet. He did the only thing he could think to do in the heat of the moment, and defended himself with a swipe of the giant key.

It turned out it made a pretty damn good weapon—great, even. Unlike the umbrella, which somehow managed to miss each time, this key hit the big black bugs, and hit them _hard_. The three nearest to him went flying, but the fourth managed to sidestep his attack and lunged toward him, reaching right for his heart.

"Nico!" Silas shouted, and that's the last thing Nico heard for a long time.

xxx

"You won't do it," Silas teased, leaning back in his desk chair. The first signs of spring blanketed the earth, and a cozy warmth clung to the breeze that flowed in from his bedroom window, even with the sun disappeared beneath the horizon. A faint scent of his father's apple blossom trees followed the wind inside. He'd never admit it out loud, but the flowers made spring Silas's favorite season.

"Give me a minute," Nico urged in that squeaky voice of his. Silas was almost sure he was the last remaining boy in high school whose balls hadn't yet dropped. (To be fair, he'd remind himself, Nico was still only fourteen years old, and almost a full year younger than him.)

He had a hard time gripping Silas's dad's piece properly; just before going to light the thing, it would slip slightly and he'd have to adjust his handle all over again. He wouldn't look Silas in the eye, and tried to keep his body turned away from him.

"You're too nervous," Silas said. "You need to calm down."

"It's not easy when you're over my shoulder," his friend complained.

"Oh, like you'll be fine if I just looked away? Look," Silas reached out and snatched the glass pipe from Nico's fingers. "Finger over the choke, mouth on this end, and light it near the edges of the bowl. That's called cornering. Like this."

He demonstrated. Silas couldn't help but feel a deep pride in himself; sure, it wasn't exactly the most scholarly of pursuits, but Nico was always the one who knew more about… well, everything. Though he had only been doing this for about a month or two before Nico finally gave in and agreed to try it, it was exciting to know something he didn't.

The smoke burned the back of his throat, and he tried to not cough. After all, he had an image to uphold. He held it in his lungs for a few seconds before letting the thick, white smoke pour out of his lips and nose. Silas turned his wrist and held the mouthpiece towards Nico. The other boy's full lips parted in shock but, after a moment's hesitation, he leaned forward and pressed them against the opening in the glass.

"Breathe in," said Silas, and he did.

He could see the discomfort on his friend's face, but he wouldn't falter. Maybe Silas being better than him at something made Nico uncomfortable.

Silas took his finger off the choke, and Nico continued to inhale, filling up his lungs to capacity. He carefully withdrew the piece and watched Nico attempt to trap the smoke in his body, mimicking Silas.

"Exhale," he said, and Nico did.

He began coughing violently. Silas couldn't help himself; he laughed. His friend tried to tell him to shut up between heaving hacks, but couldn't quite get the words out. Tears welled up in the corners of his eyes, but he smiled as he snatched a pillow from the bed on which he sat and smothered it to his face to silence the coughing.

"That sucked," he finally said, his eyes half-open and grinning like an idiot.

"You get used to it," Silas said, taking another hit himself. "Want another?"

"No. Maybe never."

He opened his mouth to respond, but a familiar, low roar sounded throughout the house. Either his dad was home from his date, or his sister was coming by to check up on him. Either way, it reeked in his room, and he wasn't in the right state of mind to explain away any of it. "Shit," he said, "my dad's home."

Nico said, "Oh."

"It stinks in here."

His friend bit his lower lip. "Do you have air freshener?"

"No. Shit." He stood and reached to the window above his desk, and opened it the three inches more it _could_ be opened, as if that would drain the room of its stench any faster. Of course, the wind chose this very minute to stop blowing.

"I can't get caught with weed," Nico said, his eyebrows furrowing. "My mom would kill me."

"It's fine, whatever, I've been caught before." Silas's eyes flickered across the room, as he remembered his friend's mom was quite a bit stricter than his own. He snatched the cheap bottle of cologne he got over the holidays last year and began to spray the area around his desk, and himself, all over. He then sprayed Nico, who proceeded to cough even more.

"The window," he said. "Jump out the window."

"What?" Nico asked. "It's like a fifteen-foot drop."

"You do gymnastics," he reminded his friend. He heard the echo of footsteps against laminate floor, growing louder as they approached the hallway. "You have to go, now!"

"Okay, okay!" Nico tossed the pillow to the side and stepped atop Silas's oak desk with his white and blue sneakers, and contorted his body in a way only gymnasts could to fit through his tiny window. When he reached the flat of the black roof, he stood for a second, looked back at Silas, waved, and jumped down.

Silas kneeled on his desk, in front of his window, and peered out. Nico, expectedly, had survived, and was running, full-speed, down the street in the direction of his house. Even with his long, skinny legs, it would take him at least ten minutes to get home, and his mom would wonder why he didn't ask her to pick him up, but at least he wouldn't be caught for this.

"Hey, Si," came a familiar, feminine voice. His sister opened the door, her long, blond hair tied up in a ponytail and carrying a plastic bag in her right hand.

"Hey, Sylvia," he responded. "What are you doing here?"

"Dad texted me saying he wouldn't be home until tomorrow, and wanted me to pick up some take-out for you. I got some for myself, too; thought we could catch up. Is Nico here?" She glanced around the room. "I thought I heard someone up here."

Silas shook his head. "Just me."

Sylvia sniffed the air, pale brown eyebrows knitting together. "It smells like an eighth grade locker room in here." She paused. "Are you hiding a girl?"

"What? No."

"It _sounded_ like a girl's voice."

Silas tried not to snicker. He'd have to tell Nico that one, later. "Just me. You can search the room, Deputy Syvlia."

Silas saw her eyes flicker to the open window, and thought for sure that she would call him out, but instead said, "I'll go set up the table. I got you orange chicken. You still like that, right?"

For the first time in what felt like an hour, Silas took a nice, full breath. He nodded.

xxx

Silas didn't know what happened to Nico when that creature lunged for his chest, but he could only look on in horror. Out released some pinkish item, floating at Silas's eye level, and, as if it were never there at all, Nico's body disappeared, key and all.

He didn't know what he was doing, or why he was doing it, but Silas frantically reached for the pink mass. Silas wanted to protect it from these black things, but didn't really know what he would do as soon as he snatched it. He wrapped his fingers around the warm, pale object, and noted that it was heart-shaped. Before he had the chance to get a good look at it, it pushed its way out of his hands and toward his chest.

Like a ghost passing through a wall, it disappeared inside of him.

This couldn't be real, but it _had_ to be. The soaking wet hair was cold against his cheeks, the thunderclaps were violent explosions in his ears, and his heart raced, raced, raced in his chest, and the flashes of lightning spotted his eyes.

Suddenly, Silas felt a weight in his hand. Nico's giant key: pointed ends, heavier than expected, and wrapped in a white strip of cloth.

He lost his footing, and nearly fell over himself. Yanking his foot back and backing up, he saw the black, yellow-eyed creatures stalking towards him. Why now? Just a moment ago, they could have been completely ignorant of his existence. Why, suddenly, did they give a damn?

The pavement cracked beneath his feet. Silas backed up a pace. It couldn't be real, but it _still was_ ; the ground was giving way beneath him, and the shadowy creatures stalking towards him slowly fell to the void as they failed to outrun the self-destructing street.

Silas shook his head, turned around, and bolted. He ran as quickly as his legs could take them, leaving even his beloved truck behind, and hearing the crunch and squeal of iron as it fell to its demise. In the sky, the swirling, violet vortex grew and grew, swallowing up the clouds, rain, and every remaining sliver of light in sight.

Ahead of him, the ground caved in. Silas hung a left, out toward the forest, but the trees bent in toward each other and splintered apart as the earth swallowed them. He turned around, and the same happened to the other side of the road. From all angles, the world was dying a crumbling death, leaving him only a patch of pavement on which to retreat, and even _that_ felt unsteady.

Heat filled Silas's skin. His vision was sharp with adrenaline. His lips hung open as he gasped for breath, his eyes darting from one end of the expanse to the other.

Silas had not three feet on either side of him now. He knew he could either fall to his death, or jump there—either way, he would die, and nobody would know how it happened.

He held his breath, silenced his mind, and leaped.


	3. Chapter II - Grief

**(A/N: Remember the days when I could crank out up to three or four chapters a week? Then I grew up, got a full-time job and stopped staying up until five in the morning to write about video game characters.**

 **Good luck with this chapter, friends.)**

 **CHAPTER II**

 **GRIEF**

 _I'm yours. I'm yours.  
_ _Why does the blood never stick to your teeth?  
_ _Mama, stop giving me grief._

Massive Attack, "Voodoo In My Blood"  
 _Ritual Spirit_

Silas's head pounded with a pain he'd never felt before. With his luck, he really wasn't surprised that he'd have to go to graduation with a migraine. He dreaded nothing more than sitting among hundreds of people for two hours, listening to people talk about how much they look forward to their futures, even _without_ a headache. No part of him wanted to open his eyes.

Until he remembered the black creatures.

His eyes shot open, and he was immediately assaulted with neon lights. They seemed to be strung up atop a half-wall, in the corner of which rested a bright, golden fountain, with shallow water bubbling up beneath an archway. Multiple pointed dormer windows peppered the building behind the wall, which held a strange, patchwork design of various textures and colors, as if built up from a thousand different buildings.

When his eyes finally adjusted, he found he was lying on the tiled ground of what must have been an entirely empty precinct of a city. While lights peppered the buildings which surrounded him, pouring even into the alleyways between them, there was not a single soul wandering the concrete courtyard.

How late _was_ it? The sun was down and stars twinkled in the sky, but everyone's lights were still on. Silas figured there must have been some people who wandered around at night… unless they knew better.

 _Maybe it's for the best_ , he thought, rubbing his temples with dirty fingers, blackened by who-knows-what. He was sure, as he licked his dry lips, they had cracked and bled, and if he wasn't absolutely covered with bruises with the pain he was in, he would be surprised.

But where _was_ he?

Silas tried to gather his memories. He was driving with Nico. He swerved to avoid a cat in the road, but it wasn't really a cat… it was some black, deformed creature. Nico left the car to investigate, and was attacked by a bunch of those creatures. Silas sucked it up, and left the car to check on him… only for his friend to get attacked and disappear. Then, the world crumbled around him… and he had this weird, giant key that Nico had before he vanished.

That weird, giant key.

The mere thought of the thing must have summoned it. An intense light coming from his right hand, brighter even than the neon signs and building lights, blinded him, but as quickly as it appeared, it fizzled out, and left behind that weapon (what else could it _be_?)

Silas was confused, but relieved. Something told him he didn't see the last of those black bugs, and needed some way to protect himself… unless they attacked him _because_ he had that key. They were certainly going after Nico with some intensity, and were relatively content to ignore Silas until he had it for himself.

 _Nico_. Where did Nico go?

The throbbing started up again, after a blissful minute of numbness. Clearly, now wasn't the time for speculating. Wherever Silas was must have been where Nico disappeared to. With some wandering, he knew he would come upon either his best friend or someone who could make sense of whatever the hell just happened.

His left leg screamed in agony, but he bit back all the cusses that exploded from his lungs. It didn't _look_ broken, but he felt excruciating pain in his calf. New plan: find a doctor, or even just a place—indoors—to sit, and fast. Nico would only make fun of him if he knew that he was hobbling along a strange city trying to find him on a busted leg.

 _I look homeless_ , he thought with bitterness as he lumbered forward, looking for the closest door on which to knock. At the very least, maybe a kind resident would call him an ambulance.

Because the world clearly hadn't betrayed his expectations enough in the last twenty-four hours, rather than allowing him to place the key in the keyhole, a small beam of light shot out from the tip of the key and into the keyhole. For a few brief moments the light sustained itself, before fading quickly with a small clicking sound.

Silas was done trying to understand. He didn't have high hopes, but grabbed the handles of the door once again. This time, with a great amount of effort, they swung open.

Any concern that he may have been trespassing was squashed as soon as he noticed that the doors didn't open up to a building, but rather an entirely different portion of the town. What city in the world was separated by tall, brick walls and locked doors? Silas just knew he had to be dreaming, so he had no reason to be afraid.

He emerged between two buildings, but after walking forward a bit, was able to get a nice view of a large, cobblestone courtyard, punctuated by whimsically crooked lanterns and surrounded by various shops and what looked like a little café. All of this rested at the end of a short flight of stone stairs, dividing the town into two levels. He stood at the top level, beside a couple of stores with signs reminiscent of the area he just came from reading "jewelry" and "ACCESSORY." Luminaries of various colors and styles hung from and perched atop wrought-iron wall hangings at every turn, bathing the starlit town in a comforting, incandescent glow.

There was nothing familiar about this place. It was so unlike the rolling cornfields, thick woods, and stocky farmhouses back home. In his hometown, Silas could take a deep breath and smell _air_ —he could smell burning autumn leaves, the cool freshness of the creek cutting the town in two, and the stinging chill of winter's first frost.

Here, Silas smelled hot garbage.

Granted, he was fairly close to an alleyway.

He'd seen cities in films, and read about them in books for school, but had never actually visited one himself. As far as he was aware, there was a small city some fifty miles from his hometown, but that was it. People passed stories around of faraway cities with shops on every corner, apartments buildings that reached toward the sky, and small green parks cornered in by the concrete where people walk their dogs between patches of clean-cute grass, but they were just that: stories.

Maybe this one wasn't exactly like the stories, but it sure as hell wasn't anything like how his parents described _the_ city. This couldn't be it, could it?

If only there was someone around to tell him where he was.

Like whatever higher power out there had heard his prayers and sent him exactly what he needed, a voice called out from behind him.

"Nowhere around here."

The voice was feminine—deep and husky, but unmistakably feminine. It wasn't coming from the courtyard, but somewhere on the higher level of the district. There was still nobody in sight, so he assumed she was exiting a building somewhere, or hanging out in the alleyway.

"Maybe third district?" came another voice, this one male and only slightly deeper than the first.

"If he's even here, at all." A pause. Could they have been talking about Silas? He entertained the possibility a moment before the female voice said, "This is outlandish, even by our standards."

There was shuffling of some kind. "Let's just check third district and get it over with. If he's not here, we can go home and get pizza or something."

"You are a black hole that exclusively consumes pizza," the woman muttered, and, with footsteps, the voices disappeared.

Silas didn't realize how relieved he was to hear human voices until they were gone. Suddenly frantic, he allowed himself to put pressure on his gimp leg (which sent another eruption of pain all up his body) and headed back in the direction of the doors. He remembered the small sign next to the door through which he arrived at this shopping center—he _just came from the Third District_. He couldn't let these people, possibly his only shot at fixing his leg, get away.

"Wait," he shouted, hoping to hear something back, but nobody answered. They were likely already through the door.

He found, the faster he moved, the less he could feel his leg (or perhaps adrenaline was numbing him to the excruciating pain). Reaching the door again, after what felt like years of limping, he pushed the doors open.

Any hope that watching his best friend disappear into nothingness before he blacked out was squashed with what he saw next. Two people—a man and a woman, just as he expected—were both slashing at a horde of crawling, black creatures.

These monsters (and clearly, they were monsters, not wild animals as he previously expected) were different than he remembered them. They were almost cartoon-like in appearance when they appeared out of thin air to Nico on the road, with giant feet, short limbs, and goofy heads, but these weren't the same. These were, somehow, menacing.

It's not that they looked much different than the others, either. They were still black, they still had antennae coming from their heads, they still had glowing yellow eyes, and they still arrived in a pack…. but their arms and legs were longer, their long antennae draped in a zig-zag fashion behind their human-like heads, and their spindly fingers were like daggers erupting from their palms.

Were these the same?

His would-be saviors were making fast work of the creatures. While Silas couldn't get a good look at either of them, the woman seemed to be tall and somewhat muscular with dark skin and brown hair, and wore a gray dress with a high waist and bell-shaped long sleeves, like something you would see on a vintage doll. She carried a staff of some kind, which he couldn't keep track of with how quickly she moved it.

The man was about just as tall as his companion, with pale skin, an average build, and short, reddish-brown hair. He carried what could only be described as a large, steel blue, three-barreled gun, and wore an outfit of a blue-gray shirt beneath a leather jacket, which matched his knee-high boots that bunched black jeans at the knees. Various wristbands, watches, and leather cuffs adorned his arms from his wrists to his biceps.

He shot out at one of the creatures, and a rapid succession of what looked like little blue balls of light, like bullets, fired from the two smaller barrels on the gun. It put the creature at quite a distance away, after which the man seemed to _literally_ float up in a gust of air, stray debris swirling around him. The woman had her staff pointed at the man.

 _Did_ she _do that?_

There was no way, but then, there was no way this man could be floating ten feet in the air. He reached the creature he'd just knocked away, hiked his gun over his shoulder and, from a distance of no more than three feet, shot at him again. This time, a giant, gray bullet flew out of the biggest barrel, and the creature seemed to fade out of existence in a colorful miasma more quickly than Silas could register what had happened.

The recoil shot the man backward into the air, but as he regained his composure, the woman was already making quick work of the remaining monsters, as pale silver crescent-shaped objects flew from the top of her staff at them, and disappeared shortly after. Fire, maybe? Energy?

"We have to keep moving," said the man. "They keep coming."

Did they? Now that Silas was paying attention, he realized that, despite the two consistently destroying these creatures, their numbers didn't seem to dwindle at all. Could he help? He looked down at the giant key in his hand. Not with his shitty leg, he couldn't.

"Alright, let's go back to the Second District once more," said the woman. They turned toward the opposite end of the courtyard.

" _Wait_!" Silas begged in his loudest voice.

This time, they seemed to hear him. Both, in synchronization, turned. Silas could barely see their faces through the swarm of monsters.

"There he is!" said the man, his voice heightening considerably.

Even behind the madness, he could see the woman's eyes widen until white surrounded her irises. "Watch out!" she cried.

Silas felt a sharp pain in his left shoulderblade before he could even register the woman's command. Twisting his ankle in the process, he turned to face his aggressor, which was, as he expected, another black monster. By this time, his leg, with it broken bone and twisted ankle, could not support him anymore, and he fell, with a clumsy thump, right on his tailbone.

It loomed over him like a surgeon in the OR. Silas's breathing quickened, and every cell in his body refused to move.

"Dude, use the keyblade!" the man shouted, but his words and voice were just muffled nonsense.

With the creature not an inch from his face, and smelling like cat shit mixed with decaying skin, Silas was sure this was the end of him. He tried to remember a prayer his mom taught him as a child, but could remember only the last word.

Death was a crack of lightning.

Yet, even in the bright flood of light, his chest moved with each breath, his beneath him ached, and spots danced in his eyes. Death really wasn't much different from life, save for limited visibility.

Except he wasn't dead. After what felt like an eternity of sitting in pain, waiting for vision to return to him, the light disappeared and his eyes adjusted to the dimly-lit city. The creature in front of him had disappeared.

Stunned, he turned his head around. He survived?

So did the man and the woman, it seemed. What didn't make it was the collection of monsters; each one vanished into nothingness, leaving only their prey behind.

xxx

"Well? What was it like?"

Nico sighed, shoving his hands into his pockets, like he had a tendency to do whenever he felt put on-the-spot. Silas couldn't help but feel a little guilty for making him uncomfortable, even accidentally. "I don't know," he answered. "It was crowded, and there was a coffee shop on every corner. It was really loud, and smelled like hot dogs."

"That doesn't sound too bad," Silas responded, glancing back down at his math homework. " _Fuck_ , man. I don't know what I'm doing."

"Keep it down," Nico hissed. "The last time my mom heard me saying that, she washed my mouth out with soap."

Silas noticed he kindly neglected to mention from whom he got the habit of cussing. "You were nine years old," he said, trying not to laugh.

"Still."

Silas sighed. "Will you just help me with this?"

Nico gave him a hesitant nod, and bent his head to the left, where Silas was sitting. Silas thought, if he breathed in deeply enough, he might be able to smell the hot dogs and coffee of the city that Nico described, but he hesitated to do that. Part of him was still bitter that he couldn't go with them, but a funeral isn't exactly something you invite your friend to.

"You're just supposed to sketch a graph of sine. It's not even an equation." He reached over Silas's paper and grabbed a pencil. His arm came within centimeters of Silas's jaw, which he became hyper aware of. "You just make a plot point on each multiple of pi, with zero being the center."

He sketched out the shape of an undulating ocean across the axes. "It's that easy. And with this next one, you just have to do the same thing for cosine. Do you remember what points of the graph to do for cosine?"

Silas opened his mouth, fully ready to guess, but knew that Nico would see right through that, and instead shrugged. "Dunno."

Nico frowned, putting the pencil down.

"We literally learned this today."

"You learned this today." Silas tried to laugh it off as he leaned backwards in the kitchen chair Nico pulled into his room for him. He could practically hear the sweat rolling down the side of his best friend's head at the mere thought of those chair legs scratching the hardwood floor. "I was finishing the dream I started last night."

"Come on, man," Nico grumbled, returning to his own homework. He was a good four problems ahead of Silas. "I can't do your homework for you forever."

Silas sighed, sensing his friend's frustration. "Stop giving me grief," he grumbled. "It'll get done."

"I'm not doing it for you."

"Okay... but if you _did_ to it for me," said Silas, adding, "hippothetically—"

" _Hypothetically_ ," Nico quickly corrected.

"Hypothetically, I could finish your clock for you."

Were Nico a dog, his ears would have perked up. His eyes widened. Silas knew he'd be interested; the only class he couldn't pass if his life depended on it was woodshop, because his hand-eye coordination was only marginally better than his three year-old cousin's.

He deflated almost as quickly as he showed interest. "Mr. Anderson would know it wasn't me."

"I'll make it crappy enough that it looks like you just pulled through."

Nico chewed on his lower lip for a minute. "Okay," he said, grabbing the paper in front of Silas. "Cosine looks like this...

xxx

"Thundaga," said the man, as both he and the woman headed in Silas's direction. "Nice."

As they approached, Silas got a better look at them. They couldn't have been much older than himself, but they certainly gave off the impression of adults. The boy had impossible sea-green eyes, but aside from that, was average in every way. There was nothing particularly striking about him, from his rounded nose to his angular jaw, which made Silas think he could never pick him out of a crowd.

The girl was just the opposite. She was the kind of girl that everyone stared at, gender aside, and not because she was overwhelmingly pretty, but because she was pretty in such a striking way. Her brown hair was wavy, hit just below the highest point of her shoulders, and was parted on the left side. Against her dark skin, her eyes, hazel at the edges and gray-blue near the center, were absolutely piercing.

"You don't look in great shape," she said, pointing her long staff at his leg.

Because he hadn't seen enough he couldn't explain today, a bright pink light blossomed from the crescent end of the girl's staff and hovered above Silas's twisted leg. Petals, he noticed: the pink light seemed to shape to a cluster of petals, appearing almost like those flowers that floated in ponds among lily pads. What were those called?

His leg was surrounded by a dozen small, green lights—these were, no doubt, leaves. All at once, the flower and leaves disappeared, and, in tranquil numbness, his leg twisted itself back into shape. Silas had almost given up entirely on his leg, but even in his highest hopes, he didn't expect it to be cured so thoroughly and immediately.

For a few glorious moments, he felt nothing as he stared at his healed limb. When sensation finally began to return to him, the skin felt tender—likely from the twisting of bone underneath—but he could put pressure on his leg and not feel like howling out in pain.

"Thanks," he said, after what felt like an inappropriately long time to sit, staring, stunned, in silence.

"Sure," she said, and glanced over at her friend. "Can you believe this?" she asked him.

He shook his head.

"Um…" Silas stood, a bit shaky on his feet, but glad to be healthy. In fact, not only his leg was better, but all of the cuts and scrapes on his skin seemed to have stitched together, leaving only dried blood as any evidence of their existence. "Who are you?"

After another glance at her companion, the girl said, "My name is Araceli."

"Dylan," said the guy.

He gave them a nod. "I'm Silas."

"Silas," said Araceli, slowly. "Your name is Silas?"

He nodded.

"That's strange."

Silas's eyebrows knitted together. "No stranger than Araceli." He was only half-sure he was saying it correctly. "Where am I?"

"Hey, we're asking the questions, here," said Dylan, but there was a distinct lack of bite behind his words. Silas didn't worry for a second about this plain-looking guy in his weird getup. He added, "But we'll get to all that."

"Whatever it is," Silas half-mumbled, "I don't know anything." If they had any idea how honestly terrified and confused he'd been for the past half an hour, they wouldn't be asking him anything except whether or not he needed a place to rest.

"Silas," Araceli began, "where is Nico?"


	4. Chapter III - Justice

**(A/N: I am really good at writing entire chapters of fanfiction during slow days at work. Why can't I do that with my serious fiction writing? Going to have to work on that.**

 **Anyway, this chapter is that obligatory let's-explain-the-world-of-KH-to-the-newcomer chapter, so I tried to make it a little more interesting and add a flashback... but I'm pretty sure I'm just going to add a flashback to every chapter. It's kind of what my writing style has turned into; I don't like telling a story in only one period of time. I feel like flashbacks really help fill in gaps while still allowing you to conceal anything you want.**

 **Ramble aside, ta-da.)**

 **CHAPTER III**

 **JUSTICE**

 _Do you feel any better now?  
Your father is lying where the bones are,  
A little lost colony from the start.  
I can't forget the skin pulled tight, every letter read.  
Is it your justice we never see?_

Kauf, "Relocate"  
 _As Much Again_

Araceli and Dylan guided Silas into a small house in the first district. Dylan had mused aloud that maybe Silas scared the rest of the Heartless away with his Thundaga, as the third district was peaceful for the remainder of their time there, though he had never seen anything like that before.

Silas was still trying to figure out what the other boy meant by "Thundaga." Was he trying to say "Thunder?"

He couldn't help the small smile that sneaked onto his face. That would bother Nico so much. "Thunder" and "lightning" aren't the same thing. What Dylan meant to say was "lightning." Silas couldn't care any less, but he cared because he knew Nico cared.

His smile faded by the time they reached the tiny home. _Nico_. He couldn't be dead. He wouldn't allow the thought to take root in his mind and dig its way to the very center, though it was a battle in and of itself to keep the suspicion away.

 _Thundaga_. What did that even mean? He didn't do anything. He sat there, helpless, with a broken leg, and just tried to cover as much of his upper body as possible as the black creature tried to attack him the way it had attacked Nico.

The house was no larger than his bedroom back home, and everything, from furniture to supplies, was sparse.

"Sit anywhere," said Araceli, so Silas stood with his back to the rectangular, light-wood table in the center of the house and pushed down with the heels of his hands, taking a seat atop the table. She _did_ say "anywhere." Besides, Silas was too busy marveling at the state of his leg and trying to calm swimming thoughts about Nico, thunder, and shadowy creatures to care too much about his etiquette.

"Do you live here?" he asked neither of them in particular.

For a moment, neither of them said anything. Then, seemingly realizing the other wasn't speaking, Dylan said, "This house has been empty for a while. Some puppet maker used to live here. I think."

That, alone, was baffling to Silas. Nobody back home kept any door unlocked when they weren't home, because if they did, it would, sure as shit, be tagged with various graffiti art and ransacked for anything valuable.

It's not that most people in his hometown were criminals, it's just that the few criminals it did have were thorough and unquenchable.

He couldn't put off talking about it any longer. "So, you know Nico?" Silas asked.

Araceli raised her left eyebrow, leaning against the wall perpendicular to him and crossing her toned arms over her chest. Her staff seemed to disappear into thin air shortly after the fight, much the same way his giant key had. Silas had no doubt this girl knew how to summon and dispel her weapon at any given moment. Silas's key came and went as it pleased.

" _You_ know Nico?" she asked.

Silas's fingers were fidgety. He was rarely fidgety; he was known in school for being the calm and collected one, the one who wouldn't let a failed test or a detention threat faze him. It was that very fact that made people, in general, like him so much. It wasn't that he had many real friends aside from Nico, but he certainly didn't have any enemies, even in the teachers.

His own anxiety made him feel like a fraud which, in turn, gave him more anxiety.

"How do you know Nico?" Silas asked, channeling all of his energy into keeping his voice steady.

Araceli squeezed her arms tighter—a minute motion her expression implied she didn't want or expect him to notice, but Silas noticed things about people. He didn't notice a lot of important things, but "people" was one subject he could always ace. Too bad it was never on the list of classes to take, year after year.

This is why his dad didn't worry about his grades. He was convinced Silas's people skills could take him places. His father never specified _which_ places it would take him, but the ambiguity was a comfort to his son. Silas's mother, on the other hand, was the parent who stressed out about his grades, attendance, and record. Whenever he needed a parent to sign anything, he always went to his dad. In eighth grade, his science teacher began to catch on, and started calling his mother directly. Fuck her.

Thinking about school and his parents hurt and terrified him almost as much as thinking about Nico. _Wipe the slate clean_ , he reminded himself, and imagined his thoughts as jumbled nonsense in black marker on a whiteboard, before erasing it all in four clean swipes.

The girl let out a long sigh.

"We don't," Dylan finally said. "We met with a wizard who said a boy named Nico who could wield the Keyblade washed up in Traverse Town. We need help, so we went looking for him."

"Nico's here?" Silas asked. "In Traverse Town?"

Araceli said, "You're the only person we've encountered, and we've been searching for hours."

Silas's hands curled into fists. "You weren't looking hard enough."

"Hey," said Dylan, "we searched every nook and cranny, alright? Nico isn't here." He paused a beat. Silas tried to keep his thoughts clear. "We can ask the shop owners if they've seen anyone, but that's all we can do."

"Are you worried about him?" Araceli asked.

Silas thought for a second, and nodded.

"Don't be. He probably woke up long before you and found his way out of here. The wizard said he was here hours ago. There's a gummi ship shop a short distance from here. He could have gathered enough money to leave, or, heaven forbid, stolen a ship, if he's no longer here."

Despite having no clue what a gummi ship was, he could infer that it was something that took you places based on the context. Between gummi ships, Thundaga, a wizard, and a Keyblade, Silas was only half-certain he understood what they were talking about.

But he could guess. Gummi ship must be how you leave this place. A wizard was, hopefully, not the same kind Nico played as in his tabletop RPGs. A keyblade must be his weapon—it's a giant key, after all.

"I wonder why he didn't mention you," Araceli considered, "when he saw Nico's arrival. Since you have a Keyblade, too. Did you come after him?"

"About the Keyblade," Silas said, ignoring her question as he felt she was wondering aloud more than directly asking him, "is that what I had?"

Dylan and Araceli exchanged a nervous glance they didn't even try to conceal. Didn't they know things like that just made people more nervous? "Did you _just_ get that?" Dylan asked.

Silas nodded.

Araceli uncrossed her arms, and hoisted herself up onto the table to the right of him. Dylan, apparently feeling awkward standing in the corner of the room, followed shortly after and sat to his right as Araceli said, "Tell us exactly what happened. How did you get to Traverse Town?"

He didn't really know the answer to that question, so he backtracked to the night before. "I'm supposed to graduate tomorrow—or maybe today. I don't know. It was storming out, so I couldn't sleep. Storms make me uneasy. So I drove to pick up Nico so we could hang out."

Maybe he went into too much detail about the drive to Nico's place; the two of them lived literal cornfields apart from each other, but they were actually some of the closest neighbors in town. He didn't know how or why Nico was awake; he slept like a baby in storms, but he was relieved he was. Silas didn't know where they were going that night. He just wanted to drive.

Dylan was a great audience. His eyes widened at all the right parts of the story, and he asked questions to keep it moving. Araceli, however, only nodded thoughtfully and screwed up her forehead when the creature attacked Nico.

"And I woke up here… well, in the third district."

"Okay," Araceli started. "Good thing you're sitting down." She swung her legs a little bit before saying, "Hard part, first: your hometown is gone."

Silas laughed. Did she really think that was news? "I saw it crumble under my feet," he murmured. "I know it's gone."

"But it's not gone forever," Dylan interjected. "Worlds have been restored before. And, odds are, most of your friends are alive."

Araceli side-eyed Dylan, to which he replied in a grunty, "What?" but Silas didn't really care about the state of anyone except Nico, his mother, father, and sister.

"Secondly," Araceli continued, "those things you were fighting are the same things we were fighting here, just in a different shape. They're called Heartless. They're what happens when a heart is completely overcome by darkness. When another Heartless steals the heart of a person and corrupts it. Though some are manmade."

Silas blinks. "So, hearts can be taken and… _overcome by darkness_. Does that mean they become evil?"

Araceli swung her legs once more. "More or less."

"And the person dies?"

She shook her head at this. "Not quite. Their bodies, their empty shells, become an entity known as a Nobody. Like Heartless, they come in different shapes, and are stronger or weaker depending on the state of the person whose heart was corrupted. Nobodies don't tend to linger here."

Heartless. Nobodies. Silas was only half-sure he was following along, though it all felt stranger than fiction. "Can they be put back together?"

"Under certain conditions, it's possible," Araceli informed him with the patience of a saint. "If you manage to reunite the Heartless with its respective Nobody, _and_ simultaneously pull that heart out of the darkness, you can make a person whole again. Some Nobodies have even been known to grow a new heart altogether. On rare occasions, a person's heart has been restored, but their Nobody still remains."

Silas decided to stop asking questions. He was barely managing to keep up with this walking encyclopedia's explanations, so he thought it better to quit while he was ahead. "Is that what happened to Nico?" he asked instead, dreading the answer.

Araceli shook her head. "It's impossible. The wizard saw him touch down on Traverse Town. I think you mistook what you saw; he probably fell beneath the cracking earth before the Heartless could get at him."

Silas wanted that so badly to be true, but knew it wasn't. "I know what I saw," he said. "The ground didn't start breaking apart until after his body disappeared."

"The wizard got a clear reading of him, dude," Dylan said. "Name, and everything. He made it out of your town."

Araceli blinked once, twice slowly. The silence was so thick, Silas was sure he could feel it on his fingertips, dense and rubbery. "Unless," she said, "you took his heart into your body."

xxx

Silas's fists curled into red, trembling balls.

Sure, he had expected his cherry red pickup to be tagged _someday_ , but not in the middle of the parking lot of the fucking skate park earlier than ten pm. It was just him and Nico there; he _knew_ that. There wasn't anyone else in sight.

As if reading his mind, Nico said, "They must have come up when you were on your longboard. It can be pretty noisy."

He didn't want to hear about how noisy his longboard was, and shrugged off Nico's hand when he placed it on his friend's shoulder. Silas couldn't get a good look at his friend, with his eyes so glued to his baby, but knew that he wouldn't be hurt by the gesture. Nico _knew_ how much that shitty old car meant to him.

Silas had gotten it as a sixteenth birthday present not a half year prior. His dad managed to hide it in their garage covered up in a tarp for two days before, claiming it was his mom's car that she was keeping at his house for a couple of days until she could get it repaired. The story didn't make a lot of sense, and his mom's little sedan wouldn't have taken up so much floor space in the garage, but Silas never quite grew out of accepting everything his father said without a word. He trusted him.

Even when his dad betrayed his trust, he did it in the best way possible. He couldn't wait to see his son's face, so he woke him up at six in the morning on his birthday, which landed on a Saturday this year, and listened to him bitch the entire way down the stairs until they reached the garage, and he pulled the tarp off of the car.

The ratty old thing, already with over a hundred thousand miles on it and rusting in the corners, couldn't have been worth more than a thousand dollars, but Silas loved it. He loved the splitting polyester interior, with yellow foam cushions poking out of the seams, and he loved the faint smell of skunk and spit that lingered behind every single air freshener. He loved being able to toss his skateboard and drum set in the back, and loved that he was the first person in school anyone called when they needed something big moved across town. He loved the stupid, plastic hula girl suctioned to his dashboard, and he loved that Nico cut out a picture of his own face and taped it over the plastic figurine.

"No girls in the car," his dad had said when Silas finally snapped out of his reverie, "and no pot."

Of course, he broke the second rule religiously, but only managed to break the first once. Her name was Maria, and she was cute. She had curly, shoulder-length hair, a dusting of freckles over her nose and cheekbones, and big, sweet brown eyes. He could still feel the hard metal of the bottom of the cab beneath the ratty, flannel polka-dot throw blanket he'd swiped from the living room as he rushed out the door, and imagined it was only worse on Maria's spine, but she was a good sport about it.

She called him the next day, and he didn't answer. It's not that he missed the call; he stared at the phone, and watched it light up with her face and name, before turning over in his bed and staring out the window.

Three months later, and he still didn't understand why he did that. Silas wasn't a player. He was a lot of things, and he had a lot of the same _qualities_ as a player, but he wasn't one. He didn't like knowing that he hurt such a kind girl that way.

He reminded himself, as he stared at his truck, to scrape up some money and send her some flowers. Silas still had her address written down somewhere; he wouldn't have them write his name down.

"We have to go," said Nico. "We can probably catch up to them."

"Why?" Silas asked.

"Retribution."

He was silent for a moment, slowly turning his head toward his friend. He didn't need to ask.

"It means justice," Nico answered.

He didn't expect this from Nico, whose timidity was only outshined by his anxiety, but knew he only said so much because he _understood_. Besides, seeing a freshly-painted red car defaced with a stupid smiley face with "x" eyes and its tongue sticking out in white spray paint would piss off just about anybody.

They said no more, and hopped in the skunk, spit, and tropical breeze-scented hunk of metal. "It was probably Jason," Nico suggested, buckling in as Silas turned around in the parking lot, tires screeching. "We should go to the park by Randall's house."

"The park?" Silas asked, as he was about to make a left out of the lot, but quickly turned the wheel, tires screeching, to make a right instead. "Wouldn't he be at home?"

"I heard them talk about smoking cigarettes in the park in the locker room, once," Nico said. "It's not much to go off of, but I _also_ heard them talk about how they always need a smoke after tagging another time."

Nico was scary-good at putting two and two together, and in no time flat. He had no choice but to trust him.

They sped down the country road at twenty, thirty miles over the speed limit (which they could argue they couldn't see without streetlights, anyway, and that's if the police gave a damn in the first place). In fifteen minutes, they reached the dark park, with the sign reading "Eurydice Community Park" lit with a sputtering single lightbulb at its base. A long, black drive wound into the park, which was actually quite an impressive collection of monkey bars, swings, teeter-totters and plastic, springy animals, despite the town's budget.

This was where Silas and Nico met. He'd almost forgotten.

Since that day, his dad developed a phobia of parks and never took him there, instead electing to take him to a community pool some thirty minutes away, where Silas begrudgingly learned how to breaststroke as a first-grader.

They parked the car, driving up as silently as possible, and slowly made their way down the black tar walkway, until they could just barely see a small, flickering, burning light just beneath the monkey bars. The contours of three faces lit up briefly in the night before disappearing back into darkness with the release of the lighter. The stale stench of burning tobacco wafted through the warm mid-May breeze to where they stood. Nico wrinkled his nose.

"Yo, Jason!" Silas shouted, lengthening and hardening his steps.

The other boy threw his smoldering cigarette into the woodchips and crushed it out with the sole of his boot before it could ignite the whole park. He and his two friends, Randall and Mark, were all huddled in a stupid little circle. They seemed to wear the same tool uniform that every douche in town wore: some sort of flannel plaid button-up over a black or white wife beater, and jeans that were supported only by the fat on their asses, revealing their clashing plaid boxers.

Jason had this ridiculous swirl design shaved onto the side of his black hair, serving in stark contrast to Mark's long, blond bangs and snakebites, which he was pretty sure the boy had dyed and pierced himself, respectively. Randall could have been any other respectable guy in town, with brown hair maybe a little too long and greasy, but otherwise completely plain looking, were it not for his association with Jason and Mark. Silas always thought Randall was only caught up with those other two because nobody else gave him the time of day, not because he actually liked vandalizing and smoking cigarettes. He saw the kid's grade on a book report once, and he'd gotten not only an A+, but a little golden star sticker and a teacher's comment in red reading "Beautiful work, as always!" underlined twice.

He'd seen Randall smile before quickly tucking his report away in his half-open backpack.

"What're you gonna do?" Nico mumbled, having apparently not thought this far ahead, but Silas was still moving up to Jason. His speed and refuse to veer from his course stunned the other boys into petrification.

"Retribution, motherfucker," he said, and split his knuckles open as his right fist collided with Jason's jaw.

xxx

"Is that even possible?" Silas asked.

"Actually, yeah," Dylan said. "This legendary Keyblade wielder, he once restored a ton of dead worlds back to life after closing the Door to Darkness." He didn't stop at Silas's confused expression. "A Princess of Heart, one of seven legendary women with entirely pure hearts, she chose his body as a vessel for her heart for safekeeping."

"His heart might have reached your body before it could be eclipsed by the darkness," Araceli suggested.

"Did this Princess become a Nobody?" he asked, finding himself worried for Nico.

"No, but she was a Princess of Heart, so the rules are… different," Araceli said, choosing her words carefully. "Unless this Nico is the first ever Prince of Heart in recorded history, he very likely has a Nobody out there somewhere."

"And… he can't be whole without his Nobody?"

She shook her head. "Unless he manages to grow a whole new heart on his own." She paused. "We need to talk to the wizard. He would know what to do. But, first, we need to be absolutely certain that Nico's heart is in your body."

Silas, with caution, put his hand to his chest and felt for beats. He already had a hard enough time feeling his heartbeat, and could barely feel it now, but there was unmistakably only one heartbeat in there.

"Hey, it's not a physical heart, dude," said Dylan. "It's more like… I don't know how to describe it. It's not the thing with the aortas."

He kept listening, just in case. Maybe they were wrong. Maybe, assuming they weren't completely crazy and Nico's heart did make his way into his body, there was a way for him to _know_.

Silas must have felt fifteen heart beats before, either his dazed and confused brain conjured up the word, or he actually felt it, in his being, rippling through his chest and down his limbs: _retribution_.

"He's here," said Silas, never so sure of himself. "Nico's here."


	5. Chapter IV - Buried

**(A/N: I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad... I keep writing these chapters during work and publishing them while tipsy. Enjoy!)**

 **CHAPTER IV**

 **BURIED**

 _Soon I'll come around, lost and never found,  
Waiting for my words, seen, but never heard.  
Buried underground, but I'll keep coming._

Low Roar, "I'll Keep Coming"  
 _O_

The inside of the gummi ship was much more impressive than the outside.

What looked like the byproduct of a four year-old and his set of children's building blocks in all conflicting colors on the outside was actually fairly sophisticated inside; the dome-shaped stainless steel interior seated four up front, with two seats in front of the dashboard, like a car, which contained various buttons and levers Silas couldn't comprehend, and two just behind it.

Along the edges of the interior were closed cabinets, and a couple of small beds, smaller even than twin-sized mattresses, extended out of the wall, one right on top of the other. It was cozy, but Silas assumed their trip probably wouldn't be long, seeing as the two beds' white sheets were immaculately folded.

"So we're flying through space to another world?" Silas confirmed, trying to keep whatever hints of incredulity in his voice in check.

Araceli only nodded.

"It's the world where the wizard's tower is," said Dylan. "Actually, it's a pretty small world. But it's connected to a much bigger one called Twilight Town."

Silas nodded, though he was only half-listening. Araceli took the wheel, and Dylan sat next to her. He expected nothing different, and sat on the red-cushioned seat behind the other boy, feeling somehow so much more different from these two strangers than ever before.

 _Strangers_. These were strangers, and he was getting in their vehicle. He couldn't imagine what his dad would think… if his dad was okay.

"Does the wizard have a name?" he asked, trying to keep the conversation flowing, because the longer the silence, the longer he would have to think of his dad, his sister, and Nico.

"His name is Yen Sid," Dylan said, and that's where the conversation ended. It was no use.

Araceli punched a series of buttons and turned an array of dials until the ship roared to life, the way his pickup rumbled after the third turn of his key, but smoother and at least three times louder. The seats and furniture jostled a bit, and Silas understood why nothing sat atop surfaces and everything seemed to be stored within the cabinets and drawers on the walls.

Suddenly, the shaking ended, but the noise persisted. Silas just knew this was the ship rising into the air.

Of everything he learned so far, this giant metal children's toy launching into the air, slowly, like the product of an alien abduction, was definitely in his top ten list of surreal and unbelievable things. He had never been in a plane before, and neither had anybody he knew; much like the city, it was an oft-discussed topic, but rarely seen.

The only available window to the outside world was the dashboard that Araceli and Dylan faced, so Silas tried to subtly peer over the other boy's shoulder to watch the rustic buildings, coiling wrought iron and neon signs of Traverse Town shrink and become minute dots of color, turning the expanse into an impressionist painting.

Silas felt the way he did when his house was broken into and his game system was stolen the moment they launched forward and the gleaming little city beneath them was ripped out of his vision. Suddenly, all in front of them was black. The lights in the cockpit dimmed to nothing, and Silas had to remind himself to breathe.

Tiny pinpricks of light rushed past them in streaks; it seemed, no matter how quickly they traveled and in how straight of a line, they never seemed to hit or reach any of them.

Nobody really knew what the stars were. Silas's teachers only told him they were tiny balls of light floating in space made of "indeterminate material," and Nico theorized that they were all individual suns, but both of those seemed unlikely.

"What are they?" he asked.

"What are what?" Araceli was only half-listening, her eyes flickering between the window and the various controls on the dash. What kind of life must this girl lead that traveling through the incredible expanse of space is as ordinary to her as driving down to the grocery store?

"The stars."

Silas thought he saw a flicker of a smile across her features for a moment, before she straightened her mouth, cleared her throat, and said, "Each individual star is another world. Much like your home world, or Traverse Town, the world we just left. The light you're seeing comes from the heart that world. Some are brighter, some shine more dimly."

Silas, again, found himself in awe of both her knowledge and the way she spoke; while his sentences were often clipped short and littered with "likes" and "ums" when he dared to speak for too long, hers were peppered with words he'd never used in casual conversation and spoken so eloquently, she might have been reading directly from a book.

"A world's light, its heart," she continued, "determines its strength and resilience. The stronger the world, the longer it takes to fall to the Heartless, should it become victim. Should a world's heart be locked away with the Keyblade, it's safe from succumbing to the darkness… until, at least, it's somehow unlocked again."

Silas chewed his lower lip as he took a minute to absorb her explanation, staring out at the stars flying past them, each an individual world, one by one. How different could they all be? How infinite were the possibilities? Was there a world out there where he and Nico were smoking on his porch, still in their graduation caps, reminiscing about high school and making up wild stories about their futures?

"Sounds tiring," he said.

"What do you mean?" Dylan asked.

"A person with a Keyblade has to lock a world's heart to keep it safe, but it can just be unlocked again? Doesn't that mean you could end up doubling back to the same world dozens of times just to, like, keep cleaning up after someone else's mess?" He shook his head. "I'm not going to like this job."

"It's not a job," Araceli corrected him. "You have no duty as a Keyblade wielder. But if you had the power to do good, wouldn't you?"

That was a good question that should have had an easy answer. He looked down at his hand, wondering when the Keyblade would decide to show up again. It was like that theoretical question that he heard all the time about what you would do if you found twenty dollars lying in the street. Would you take it to the police, or keep it for yourself?

Of course, Silas always said he would take it to the police, because that was the answer other people were looking for. How could he know how he would react in that instant if he'd never heard that hypothetical situation before? He'd probably take it. Realistically, he would take it.

His stomach turned a little bit. Did that make him a bad person?

Well, he wouldn't shirk this responsibility. He didn't know how he would go about doing it, but if Silas ever found a world that needed to be locked, he would help. Besides, if he could save anyone else the pain of what he was going through, why wouldn't he?

They sat in silence for a good fifteen minutes, flying through space. Dylan's eyes, which were blinking slowly, finally closed, and his breathing slowed. The boy slumped forward in his seat, neck craning downward, and began snoring faintly. He must have been exhausted.

"He always falls asleep in the ship," Araceli explained, as if anticipating the question. "Long day. It's about to get even longer."

"It's not tomorrow yet?" Silas asked with a wry smile.

Araceli punched a button on the dashboard, and the screen lit up "14:32."

"In universal time, it's just past 2:30 in the afternoon."

Silas blinked a couple of times. Was universal time somehow different than his own? It made sense; he was wide awake, despite how late out he thought it was. "Why was it so dark back in the city?"

Araceli replied, "Each world is on its own timetable. We follow universal time to help keep us on a regular schedule. Regardless, Traverse Town is in a state of perpetual nighttime. It's just how the world is."

Silas wasn't sure the moment would come when he asked Araceli a question to which the answer was just "it is what it is." He supposed one girl couldn't know everything, and in a universe so huge, so much more ridiculously vast than he had ever expected, some things still had to be a mystery even to the most intelligent people.

He took a deep breath and rested his arms and chin against the now-free back of Dylan's chair. They sat in silence for another minute. Silas normally disliked silence; that's why he hung around a lot of girls during class. Girls were generally chatty. Girls always had something to say, and he loved to listen, but hated to speak back. Nico was the same way; he was a good talker.

Araceli, not so much. Somehow, the silence wasn't as uncomfortable as he expected. It was as though Araceli had her own expectations of Silas, and they were spot-on, but she wasn't about to change her own habits to make him comfortable. He found himself with another level of respect for her, and then thought he might be overthinking things.

When he spoke again, it was organic—it was because a question had sprung to his mind, and not because he felt the ship was too quiet. "How far away is the wizard's tower?" he asked.

"Are you asking in distance, or time?"

Seeing as Silas had no idea how quickly they were going and how far apart things were typically spread out here in space, he answered, "Time, I guess."

"Twenty minutes more, at the most," she replied, "if we get attacked."

His eyebrows shot up. "Attacked?"

"There are Heartless ships out here," Araceli said in a mutter. "Normally, they're quite active. There haven't been many in the last week or so." She paused. "Dylan thinks it's because we've done a good job of eradicating them. With how those Heartless multiply, I think something else is happening. I think they've all gathered somewhere."

"Optimistic, are we?" Silas asked, grinning.

She smiled. Silas realized, as he saw the skin crinkle around her bluish-brown eyes, already quite small, which only appeared smaller, he hadn't seen her give a real smile yet. Her pale lips pushed the brown skin of her cheeks up, and her ears, poking out from her short, wavy hair, pushed backwards.

"Optimism is for the hopeless," Araceli said, her words betraying her grin. "I'm not hopeless."

She took something out from her pocket; Silas couldn't see exactly what it was, but looked white and small. Araceli put it in her mouth, and swallowed it. Food? A pill? Vitamins? He didn't think it polite to ask, though he was sure she would tell him if he did.

"No, you're not" Silas murmured, watching her until her smile faded back to her resting face before turning the other direction and resting his head on his forearm.

xxx

Eighth grade graduation was a joke.

Silas's mom told him that eighth grade graduation didn't really mean anything, and she had other things to do, so she wouldn't make it. She promised to come to his high school and college graduation. He didn't care that much.

The auditorium wasn't very packed; it was your standard, full-sized auditorium, but the graduating class was less than fifty students. Of course, a lot of people in the area had big families and brought even their second cousins and great aunts, but even with the extra heads in the crowd, each guest could claim two or three empty seats for their belongings, or as leg rests.

Nico was, unsurprisingly, the valedictorian. The principal, a bald-headed man only in his thirties, wearing a robe of his own (though in a bright blue rather than the standard forest green), finally ended his soliloquy and introduced Nico, but as "Nicodemus." He could practically feel his friend wincing from the second row; there was a good reason he went by his nickname.

He stood, shook the principal's hand, and took his place at the podium. This would be the only speech Silas would listen to.

"The truth is," his friend began, "I'm a fraud."

There was a light giggling spreading through the quiet auditorium, and some of the other graduates turned to each other and whispered. Silas's eyes flashed up to where Nico's mom was sitting with her new boyfriend. Her chin rested on her hands, fingers laced together as in a prayer, wide eyes glued to her son with her lips pursed together.

"He okay?" asked the boy next to him, a guy named Elliot with whom he had most of his Spanish classes. He was a pretty cool guy, so he didn't think he meant it with animosity.

"He's fine," Silas said.

"I'm up here because I spent most of my nights with my face buried in a science textbook or doing practice questions for algebra. I'm up here because I dedicated most of my free time to academics, because I thought getting the best grades is what will make me succeed in life. I don't think I'll ever be able to shake that feeling because of the rhetoric that's been spoonfed to me since birth."

Silas didn't quite understand, but he grinned. He was always jealous of people with vocabularies like Nico's.

"I'm thirteen years old," he said, looking at the crowd through that stupid-looking overgrown bowl cut of his. "I'm always being told that these are my golden years. This is my childhood. Once it's spent, I will never get this back. I will spend the next sixty to seventy years of my life reminiscing about a time I never really had because I spent it all drowning in school assignments for some esoteric 'better life' that I can't even enjoy because I'll be spending a thirty-three percent of it behind a computer, working myself to death to get to the next promotion and spend thirty-three percent of my time behind a _different_ computer. And I'll be spending another thirty-three percent of it sleeping."

Silas chuckled. Nico was really going for it.

"I'll never get out of this vicious cycle of trying to succeed in something I don't really want to succeed in. I've almost accepted that. And because I've relinquished my childhood away for a set of straight-As on my report card at a school level that doesn't even really _matter_ when I apply for college, I'm the one up here, getting praised, giving the speech. I'm the one parents are looking at with envy, wondering why their kid couldn't try as hard as I did. I'll tell you why: it's because your kid is fucking smart."

Silas nearly howled with laughter. He did it. The little shit _actually_ did it. Now he owed him fifty bucks. Now he had to _find_ fifty bucks.

"Your kid is so much smarter than me. Your kid spent their afternoons playing video games, playing basketball, exploring the forests, learning to cook, creating art, reading something amazing _not_ because it was on a syllabus, but because they genuinely wanted to read it. Your kid sucked the marrow out of life, and they're only thirteen or fourteen years old. And if your kid didn't, they have a lot of catching up to do."

He could hear it in his best friend's voice: remorse. Silas felt his heart sink into his stomach.

"Moving onto high school, I'm making a promise to myself: I will experience something new, at least once a day. I will break the cycle of loss: loss of my time, loss of my childhood, loss of my curiosity, and loss of my innocence. I will rediscover life. Maybe I'll go hiking. Maybe I'll try gymnastics. I don't know. And that's amazing.

"And all you parents out there, afraid your child won't get into the advanced classes in high school, afraid they won't get into the best university, afraid they won't get behind the best computer at work, know this: you are part of the problem. Don't fear for your son or daughter. Be excited for them. Be excited for that insatiable lust for life buried deep in their cores. Be excited for all of life they still have to discover. And the next time they get a C, ask yourself if it will really matter when they're lying on the bed in the hospital, surrounded by flowers and the people they love and only the memories of their childhood. Thank you."

He stepped away from the podium, and the superintendent, hesitantly, stepped forward and offered him his rolled-up diploma. After a brief moment of pure quiet, with the only noise being Nico's dress shoes clopping against the wood as he walked off the stage, applause erupted through the crowd, though the kids surrounding Silas shouted over it to each other.

Silas looked over again. Nico's mom was standing in applause, her boyfriend smiling sheepishly up at her. He thought he saw the glimmer of tears in her eyes under the fluorescent auditorium lighting.

"You're friend's insane," said Elliot to Silas, with a huge smile on his face as a way to ensure Silas knew that was a good thing. "He swore!"

Silas laughed. He couldn't help it.

xxx

They touched down on a bright world containing trees so tall they broke into the atmosphere. Silas could see nothing beneath the tips of these trees, through the orange clouds out of which they grew. There was, however, a small island, floating, it seemed, in midair, just above the tips of these trees. It was covered in pale green grass and brown dirt, and bordered by a few evergreens of its own. The sole feature of this island was a tall, impossible castle; at least seven bluish, pointed roofs craned out from sections of the gray-bricked tower, all piled atop each other in a way that _couldn't possibly_ allow it to exist without falling.

Windows were placed haphazardly around the building, and a set of stairs led up to an arched doorway, where he expected they would enter. The largest rooftop was patterned with a single, light blue crescent moon and similarly-colored stars. It looked like a place a wizard would live.

It wasn't until they landed gently on the green grass that Silas noticed a bright light in the distance; from this shimmering light emerged what looked like blue train tracks. There was no train there.

Dylan awoke organically. He blinked back sleep, gave a big yawn, and stretched his arms in front of him. "Here already?" he asked.

"You slept for half the trip," Silas told him.

"Oh. Again?"

"Again," Araceli said, but there was no resentment in her voice. She performed more nonsensical actions on the dashboard, and the ship silenced itself, the lights flickering back to life.

"Any Heartless ships?" he asked, but Araceli only shook her head as though it were some great tragedy. Maybe she was right.

When they stepped outside, Silas could immediately tell there was something different about this place. The air smelled different than both home and Traverse Town, and the sky was a different being altogether. Araceli and Dylan didn't stop to smell the roses (and why would they, when they had visited this world not one day before?) and instead headed straight for the doors.

Together, they opened the large double-doors, and Silas slipped in behind them.

"You'll hate this place," Dylan assured him as his eyes searched around the large, round room, finding the only thing of interest to be a large, spiral staircase leading to a patch of light similar to what the train tracks were coming from outside. "You just keep going through portals and ending up at different parts of the tower until the stairs decide to let you to the top."

"The stairs decide?"

"It's magic," Araceli said. "Useless, annoying magic, but magic."

It must have been like what she did with her staff, and what Silas apparently accidentally did to fend off the Heartless back in Traverse Town. Magic, wizards, other worlds, hearts, keys… he was growing more and more convinced by the minute, but a small part of him still couldn't quite believe it was all real.

They trekked up the stairs, and the other two stepped into the light and disappeared without a second thought. Silas held his breath before stepping through, but felt nothing; it was as though he had walked through a door, and ended up in a different room (which, he supposed, was exactly what happened, except with a portal).

Stairs.

"Typical," said Araceli, shaking her head. These stairs simply go upward. Silas followed the other two towards yet another portal, realizing only halfway through his ascent that the staircase was, indeed, floating in nothingness. It _felt_ stable. This world just wasn't right.

Next, they ended up in another round room, this one decorated with crescent moons.

The ascent did take at least ten more minutes. With every portal, they were transported to another set of stairs, and another wide, empty room. It wasn't until Silas's legs were really starting to kill that they finally reached a huge room.

It was surprisingly bare, and just as bizarre as the world outside of it. A large, empty brown table, save for a melting white candle beside what looked like a skull, sat in the very middle of the room, with a wood-framed green chair sporting an impossibly tall backrest (how tall _was_ this wizard?) just behind it. It leaned slightly to the right.

Similarly wooden bookshelves lined the rooms in sporadic patterns, wide enough for only a single, bi-colored hardcover book each. The windows atop the tower were, in Mysterious Tower fashion, in the shape of a large moon and star. This guy really took the whole "wizard" thing seriously.

Where _was_ this guy?

One quick glance to his travel companions told Silas that Araceli and Dylan were thinking the same thing. "Lemme check the other room," Dylan suggested, jogging over to the only other door in the study, on the righthand side of the room. He pulled the door open, peered his head inside, and shouted, "Yen Sid?"

They heard no answer.

Araceli meandered, slowly and deliberately as a cat, over to the wizard's desk. Silas could only stand, uselessly, at the entrance of the room where they left him.

Her small eyes widened. "Guys," she half-shouted.

Both Dylan and Silas walked over to stand where she was, looking down at the chair. The entire seat of the chair and first quarter of the backrest was crimson with blood. Drip-marks of red darkened the wood legs, leading to small puddles on the ground.

Araceli was the only one brave enough to make the next move. She pressed her index and middle finger of her right hand to the wood. When she pulled it away, it came off on her fingers. The blood wasn't dry yet; whatever happened to him was recent.

"No fucking way," Dylan said, his voice shaking.

Silas caught something white under the back left leg of the chair he nearly dismissed as a straightener for the seat, until remembering it was slightly crooked.

"What's that?" he asked, reaching down and grabbing the paper out from under the chair. It thumped as it straightened itself out in absence of the folded note. Feeling nosy opening it, he refused to, and handed it to Araceli instead.

Gingerly, she unfolded the blood-splattered note.

It read only a single word in large, curly letters in the center of the page: Sheridan.


	6. Chapter V - Ghost

**(A/N: Strangely, the hardest part about this chapter was deciding what song to use. One character also turned out much differently than I imagined them, but I think it will all work out for the better. I hope this chapter is still fun to read for you guys, because honestly, I think it's my weakest one so far. But that's okay. Weak chapters happen.)**

 **CHAPTER V**

 **GHOST**

 _Give me the way it could have been.  
Give me the ghost that's on the screen.  
Give me the way, but not the means,  
Give me it all._

Foals, "Give It All"  
 _What Went Down_

With her long fingers on the side of his head, she rubbed her thumb over his forehead, beneath the stark white curls hanging in his face. For a brief moment, he could see the lilac sky behind the crimson-haired woman, interrupted by auburn rooves, patched up lazily with spare boards of wood. He knelt on a hard, blue patchwork ground, surrounded by a half-wall of brick, like a courtyard.

"Where am I?" he asked.

The woman smiled. When she grinned, her mouth took her eyes with her; they crinkled under the pressure, nearly getting lost under a stray lock of long, golden-blonde hair. "Your first question isn't 'who am I,' or 'where did I come from,' but 'where am I?' Interesting."

He blinked a couple of times. Now that she mentioned it, who _was_ he? Where _did_ he come from? And who was _she_?

"Little golden ghost," she said when he said nothing, kneeling down to meet his gaze. They were around the same height; she was, perhaps, an inch taller. It could have been her posture, as well; she held her head high, her back straight, her chest thrusted outward. The woman had a kind face, though the boy couldn't exactly determine how he figured that. "Do you know your name?"

The white-haired boy shook his head. He knew a lot of words—even some words he didn't need to know, like _ennui_ and _lurid_ , but knew no names.

"Do you know how you got here?" she asked when he was, again, silent for too long.

Fearing his silence would come across as standoffish, which was the last thing he wanted to be to the nice-looking woman, he shook his head rather than remain quiet.

"Well, come on then," she said, holding out a hand. "Let's get you some clothes and food, and we can figure the rest out later."

He knew, somehow, he should take her hand—it was customary—but did not know _how_ he knew that. There was so much he didn't know; he felt, somehow, as though he was supposed to know so much more.

Placing his hand on hers gingerly, he noticed her palm was soft, and so was his. She squeezed his hand with her long fingers, the same that had brushed sweat away from his forehead, and, together, they stood.

xxx

"I have, quite literally, never heard that word in my life," Dylan said.

Sheridan. _Sheridan_. Silas found himself with nothing to contribute; he would have guessed the word was made up. "I think it's a name," he finally said, pinning the word "maybe" to the end of the sentence as if to remind his two traveling companions that he didn't think, for a second, he was any kind of authority.

"You're right," said Araceli. "It's a name. I knew a Sheridan when I was young." She turned the paper over in her hands, careful not to get any of the blood on her fingers. There was nothing on the other side. "Though I doubt there's any correlation."

"Who was he?" Dylan asked.

"Just someone I went to school with."

Araceli placed the paper down on the table, and looked at both Dylan and Silas, one-by-one, in the eyes. If this were anyone else, Silas would have guessed she was looking for a clue on what to do next, but with Araceli, it really felt like she was trying to decide whether the other two knew what she had already figured out.

Silas wasn't wrong. "I don't think Yen Sid is dead."

"I mean… _maybe_ he could've survived losing all this blood, but, like, I found a deer in the woods once who lost a ton of blood in the leg from a hunter, like about this much, and he was definitely dying."

Araceli chose to ignore at least half of Dylan's story. "Yen Sid is the most powerful sorcerer in history," she reminded him, and informed Silas. "Doubtlessly, with his powers of perception and precognitive abilities, he would have anticipated any attack. Furthermore, would they truly violently attack this man in his chair and pluck his body up into the air? There are no blood drip marks beyond this area, and no marks from dragging, either."

Silas glanced at Dylan, and then back at Araceli.

"I considered becoming a detective for a while, before… all this," Araceli said. Wet with blood and all, she stuffed the note into a hidden pocket just between her hip and lower back on the left side of her gray dress. "I don't think Yen Sid is in any kind of trouble, but he wanted someone else to think he was. He wanted someone to think this Sheridan person attacked him."

"Who would he want to think that?" Dylan asked. "Why?"

Araceli could only shake her head. "I don't have all the answers. Yen Sid gets a lot of visitors. I'm certain he's also made a lot of enemies. This is all without considering the very real possibility of this elaborate hoax being entirely directed towards us."

Silas swallowed a lump in his throat. "Have you ever given Yen Sid a reason to not trust you?" he asked in the silence. From what they were telling him back in Twilight Town, the wizard was just an informant to them; they were looking for Keyblade wielders, for whatever reason (which he had to remind himself to poke them for later), and he knew where the Keyblade wielders were. He wasn't even sure if the two of them had any sort of connection to Yen Sid previous to all of this nonsense.

But Araceli bit her lips together.

"Not recently," she half-whispered.

Dylan put a hand on Silas's shoulder, spooking him nearly into shouting out. He wasn't sure how long it was since he had been touched. The other boy just shook his head at him; had he ever seen Dylan looking so serious? Silas was pretty sure he didn't have a serious bone in his body, so whatever Araceli was thinking about was clearly territory he didn't want to wander into.

"I don't think this message was for us," she said, "but we should try to find this Sheridan, anyway."

"What makes you think that?" Dylan asked.

"We owe the wizard a lot, and on the off-chance we were meant to see this note, or he is in any real danger, it's our responsibility to do whatever we can to help him." Araceli ran her hand over the pocket of her dress, and said, "The only complication is that we don't know where to start looking for this Sheridan person."

The three stood in silence in the empty study, each occasionally catching each other's eyes, but never speaking. Silas began to notice a coppery scent in the room. His stomach flipped over when he realized it was probably coming from the drying blood on the chair.

Silas saw for himself not an hour before exactly how vast this universe was; if each star they passed was, truly, another world, there was no way to narrow down the location of this Sheridan person just by guessing. They needed some sort of trail from the pool of blood to wherever he is, and there wasn't any such trail.

"There's King Mickey," Dylan suggested.

Another name Silas didn't recognize. He waited for Dylan to elaborate, but Araceli only crossed her arms over her chest and agreed with him, stating, "That's right; King Mickey studied under Yen Sid's tutelage for quite some time in his younger years. He may have the power to find this Sheridan person using the same tracking skills as Yen Sid."

"And help bring Nico back?" Silas asked.

Araceli nodded. "Maybe. At the very least, if Mickey helps us find Sheridan, we can find Yen Sid along the way. If anyone can find Nico's Nobody with access only to Nico's heart, it's the wizard."

"That one Keyblade master and his two friends also worked under Yen Sid," Dylan suggested.

Araceli said, "If memory serves me correctly, they studied under him to take the Mark of Mastery exam, but didn't exclusively study magic the way King Mickey did. He's our best bet." She paused, scratching the side of her neck. "We can only hope he's where he's supposed to be."

"Where's that?" Silas asked.

"Disney Castle," Araceli responded. "If nothing else, we can rest there."

xxx

She called herself Nissa.

It was a beautiful-sounding name, and familiar, somehow. Still, the boy wasn't sure he ever met another woman named Nissa in his life. He wasn't even sure if Nissa was a real name, to begin with. But it must have been, or else this person wouldn't have it, and he didn't see any reason why she would give him a fake name.

Nissa bought him some spare clothes from a shop not far from the courtyard while he hid between two buildings to not "draw attention to himself." He dressed in the clothing, and found it fit quite comfortably; it consisted of a sleeveless gold shirt, a short, white overcoat, matching white shorts, and golden socks and tennis shoes. It was basic, but pleasing in how well it all worked together.

She told him there was food where she was staying, which was on the other side of town. Nissa led him through the quiet streets, and neither spoke. Occasionally, he thought he saw a flash of bright, yellow eyes from the corner of his vision, but every time he snapped his head back, nothing looked back at him. His imagination, he decided. If he really couldn't remember anything, he probably had a lot of brain damage.

They don't have to walk for long before any evidence of human inhabitation is completely absent from their path. The hard, metal floor makes way to similarly hard, similarly metallic walls. Exposed pipes jut out from every which direction; as soon as they reach a solid, stone path, the golden pipes continue to interrupt the tall, blue mountain walls.

What an interesting town.

It's a long walk before they finally reach a cavernous pit, like an empty mote. In the middle of the barren wasteland is what looks like a run-down castle; colored in all grays, browns, and blues, the various towers look hardly stable, supported only by exposed silver pipes. An odd, red heart-shaped symbol adorns the center tower, with what look like thorny vines crossing over the center. He could have been wrong, but the boy thought one of the collapsed, completely inhabitable buildings at the base of the tower was actually the remains of a bridge.

"It's actually quite cozy," Nissa said, putting her hands on her hips and smiling.

Nissa looks quite beautiful out here; the blacks and blues of her outfit seem to almost match the tower, save, of course, for the small hints of gold. She wears a sleeveless blouse in navy with a pair of black shorts, barely covering the swell of her hips. Her shoes, heels, which didn't seem practical given all the walking they were doing, was the same glittering gold as the choker around her long neck. The woman's black jacket only accentuated the shining of the gold.

She turned to him, seeing him stare. "You seem afraid," she said.

He shook his head. If he feared anything, it was offending this woman. Not only did she just exude power, she walked two miles in heels without a single complaint and had the courtesy to scoop a naked, amnesiac boy off a courtyard, clothe, and feed him without looking for so much as a "thank you." There had to be a catch. In the meantime, he wanted to stay on this woman's good side.

"Good. I'm not the one you need to be afraid of." She paused, and glanced back out at the castle.

"This is called Villain's Vale," she informed him, letting her arms drop to her side. "A little while ago, it was used as the base of operations for a very wicked queen. She was driven out, along with all of her criminal buddies. There's this organization in town—they call themselves the Radiant Garden Restoration Committee—who are working on preparations to knock this place down and make room for more homes. I'm squatting here until they do."

 _Radiant Garden_. That must be the name of the town. How could something so sinister-looking exist in a town with such a beautiful name?

"It's just me for now, but it didn't used to be." Her smile grew sad for a moment before she pulled it back into place. "So I have an extra room. You're welcome to use it."

"How do I repay you?" he asked. He didn't mean it in the "how could I ever repay you?" way. He meant it the way he said it; the boy knew there was some kind of ulterior motive for this woman's kindness, because why else would a total stranger take care of you like this?"

Nissa didn't seem surprised by the question. "I'll need you to run some errands for me," she said. "There are some bad people out there that need to be stopped."

xxx

The Gummi Ship ride to Disney Castle was half as long as the previous drive, but every bit as magical (excepting, of course, Dylan's incessant snoring). When they touched down, he woke himself up again, and they tumbled out of the ship. Araceli, once again, grabbed something from her pocket, popped it in her mouth and swallowed it. Silas wasn't sure whether he should say anything.

They emerged in an underground garage of some sort, but Silas had little time to look around before Araceli and Dylan led him up a spiraling staircase and out of the ground. Silas could see sunlight through a small opening in the leafy structure in which they emerged.

Outside of the structure was a grassy field, peppered with flowers in pinks, yellows, blues, and reds. From the lawn emerged various topiary shapes, trimmed neatly and precisely. It was a large area, and they seemed to be at the very base of a tall castle—the second Silas saw today—lined with fancy, white columns tied together with filigrees. The rooves were pointed and blue, and seemed to stretch for miles above them.

It was a miniature castle topiary that they stepped out of, Silas realized as he turned around. Interesting.

This King Mickey really took his gardening seriously.

"That's not good," said Araceli.

Silas looked over to where Araceli was staring. She had out her staff, and Dylan held out his large guns. In front of them, ten to twelve Heartless appeared. About three quarters of them were the standard black bug-like creatures Silas had seen twice already, but the rest looked like they were covered in armor, with stupid-looking black shoes that curled at the tips, silver metallic wristbands, a blue and black body suit, and their fingertips red, as if they'd been dipped in blood. These also wore a silver helmet of sorts, much like knights used to wear, except with a curled top, and they bore a heart symbol of some sort on their chests that seemed to be crossed in the middle. Their buggy, glowing yellow eyes peeked out from their helmets, struggling to stay in view as they twitched convulsively.

"Disney Castle's keyhole has been unlocked," she clarified.

Right, Silas knew that. Since there were Heartless here, that meant the heart of the world was in danger. He flexed the muscles in his hand, but his Keyblade didn't show up. That thing really had a mind of its own.

"Do you know where the keyhole is?" Dylan asked, backing away from the slowly advancing group. "Silas can lock it."

Araceli shook her head. "I don't, but King Mickey might."

"You rang?"

From the exposed hallway dropped a small, black blur of a creature, coming straight toward them. Silas's heart nearly stopped in his chest and, in a flash of light, a weight pulled down at his hand. The Keyblade showed up. He figured it must have appeared whenever he felt his life was in danger.

But the creature that appeared wasn't another Heartless—at least, he was 90% sure it wasn't. Though black, it appeared more to be an oversized mouse. He felt almost foolish thinking this, but what else could it be, with its large, round ears and long, black-tipped nose? However, it wore gloves, a red and white outfit full of zippers, and abnormally large yellow shoes. It bore a goofy smile on its face and its eyes were nothing if not cartoon-like.

He carried a large key of his own—the Keyblade. His was plainer than Silas's, with an unembellished gold shaft and key teeth at the very end, the negative space of which seemed to create a crown. The hilt was a standard brown color, surrounded by a silver guard in a squareish shape. A golden keychain dangled from the end, where a mouse head-shaped charm hung from the end.

Immediately, the mouse began swiping at the Heartless. He went after the armored ones, which didn't seem to go down as quickly as the unclothed ones, which Araceli and Dylan tackled, shooting out some pale blue energy and tiny, green-glowing bullets, respectively, at them.

If Silas hadn't felt useless before, he certainly did, now. While a few more of the smaller, feeble black Heartless popped up around them, which he busied himself with trying to destroy, he couldn't help but be in envy of their fighting abilities. How the hell did he summon that magic—that Thundaga—earlier that day? He wished he could recreate it.

In the end, he managed to do away with about four Heartless, suffering only a multitude of scratches on his legs. The mouse creature, King Mickey, he presumed, had made quick work of the armored Heartless, and watched as Silas finished off the remaining creatures.

"A new Keyblade wielder, huh?" he asked with a big grin on his face. His Keyblade disappeared, and he put his hands on his hips. "How long has he been fighting?"

"Since this morning," Dylan said, with a big grin on his face.

"Impressive!" King Mickey said. This made Silas smile.

"He even used Thundaga earlier without meaning to," Dylan bragged for him. "He could use some real training, though."

"If I had time, I would," said the King, a grave expression spreading over his features. "The castle is under attack. I don't know who managed to sneak in and unlock the world, but it couldn't have happened more than a few minutes ago. You two got here just in the nick of time. Would you help me get to the keyhole and seal off the heart of Disney Castle?"

To Silas, it didn't seem as though King Mickey really needed their assistance with this, but he didn't know how strong the Heartless were deeper in the castle. After all, there were clearly more than just those standard bug-eyed black ones.

Still, Araceli dangled the carrot in front of the king. "We'll help you," she offered, "if you promise to help us find somebody. We know you studied under Yen Sid, and he's missing. He left us only a name. Could you track a person by only his name?"

King Mickey's mouth opened in disbelief. He clamped his jaw shut, blinked once hard, and said, "I'd do anything for Yen Sid. If you think this person will help lead you to him, I'll do everything in my power to help you. But first," he glanced back at the exposed hallway of the castle, "the keyhole."

xxx

After filling himself to the brim with macaroni and cheese, courtesy of Nissa's self-admittedly limited cooking skills, his savior had shown him to the room where he could stay for the night. She said they would talk tomorrow, because she assumed, correctly, that he had a lot of questions. It was late, she insisted, and he needed his rest like any other person.

From the inside, Villain's Vale wasn't nearly as destroyed as it was on the outside. Some rooms were missing large chunks of wall, but for the most part, the inside was intact enough to be called livable. This bedroom was one such room; it was quite empty, with only a large bed covered in a hotel-white duvet, a wooden dresser directly across from it with a large mirror, and a nightstand beside the bed with a clock reading the time in violent green light.

There was a small closet here, too, and a bookshelf carrying about a dozen books, but the boy's eyelids were so heavy, he wasn't sure he could keep them open enough long enough to read even the back of a cereal box. He collapsed atop the left half of the bed, and when his head hit the pillow, he heard a strange crinkling sound.

He didn't know much, but he knew that wasn't the noise pillows made. Sitting up, the boy lifted the pillow, and found a small photograph beneath it. Lifting it, he was presented with one familiar face, and one unfamiliar.

The familiar face was Nissa's. She was smiling brightly here, with her blue eyes nearly closed in a grin, and her blond hair just barely below shoulder-length. She wore a pretty, pale blue sundress, and made the peace sign at the camera. She was somewhere sunny—maybe the beach—with a clear, blue sky and a white bird flying just behind them.

There was a man next to her, probably not much older than herself, who he did not recognize. His cheeks were flushed with pink, and he sported brown hair, spiked up in a fauxhawk. The man was rather muscular, and wore a sleeveless black shirt, with one arm around Nissa. Her boyfriend, he expected. His eyes were black, if not dark brown, but full of life with the sun shining in them, causing him to squint.

He turned over the photograph. It read, in messy scrawl, "Nissa and me, Destiny Islands, 3 year anniversary"

Sentimental, this one was.

The boy looked up and ahead, into the mirror above the dresser. For the first time, he got a good look at himself. Pale, pasty skin. Salt-white curls, nearly obscuring cat-like golden eyes. Even in his sunshine-bright clothes, with his narrow build and lack of muscular definition, he looked like a ghost compared to the man in the picture.

He felt like one, too.

Once again, he fell atop the bed, the pillow silent and cool, this time, beneath his head, and looked once more at the happy couple in the picture. Where was this man? He wanted to meet him.

He held the photograph to his chest as he dozed off to sleep.

 **(A/N: I wanted this chapter to go on for a little while longer, but it's already nearly four thousand words, so I think this is a good place to end it. That's okay, though, because I have most of next chapter planned out, already! I'll try to update fairly soon. Thanks for dealing with a chapter of mostly nonsense. Y'all rock.)**


	7. Chapter VI - Dreams

**(A/N: Sorry in advanced, guys. This is trash. I really just want to move on. I'm taking way too long on each aspect of the story. I didn't really want it to be more than twenty chapters long, but, at the rate I'm going, it'd be more like forty. I'm going to try and pick up the pace a little bit. Sorry for crappy writing! I can really go on and on when I'm writing the way I want to, so when I'm rushing, it all sort of sounds like shit…)**

 **CHAPTER VI**

 **DREAMS**

 _I'm feeling fairly lucky.  
I've been surfing shadows of success in my dreams,  
And, yes, I know my guard's down,  
But I don't mind if you see._

Josef Salvat, "This Life"  
 _Night Swim_

King Mickey (who insisted Silas call him "Mickey") led the three into the castle, toward where he claimed the keyhole to the world was. It seemed every few steps they took, more Heartless appeared. Aside from the plain black ones and the ones wearing armor, there was a third kind that began to pop up as soon as they entered the long hallway from which Mickey descended, which were tall, like towers, with red and purple bodies, only a head poking out from an opening near its base, and a curly yellow extension coming from the top.

Araceli called these Shadows, Soldiers, and Bolt Towers, respectively. As if there was enough for Silas to memorize, now each Heartless had its own name. He avoided the Bolt Towers entirely; Silas could barely handle a single Soldier on his own. For every few times he managed to hit a Heartless away, it managed to scrape at him. His skin was growing numb.

"Is getting to a keyhole always this hard?" he asked in half-jest after they finished off the remaining Heartless surrounding them. They only cleared out the hallway, leading to another corridor full of unreasonably tall doors. Silas didn't question the odd things he saw anymore.

"Harder, usually," said Dylan.

"Granted, nobody's had to seal off the keyholes of a world in a long time," Araceli told him.

Silas said, "Really? Why?"

She shuffled, leaning her staff against her right shoulder. "That's what Dylan and I are doing. Trying to figure that out. Because if the world's hearts are in danger again, either the End of the World has been restored and the Door to Darkness has been unsealed, somehow, or something entirely new is happening."

"Noble of you to take on this mystery," Mickey said with that goofy smile that rarely seemed to waver.

"Not nobility, so much as atonement," said Araceli. "I promised Yen Sid."

Atonement. Nico taught Silas that word once, a long time ago. He was pretty sure it meant something like "redemption." Could this have anything to do with what Dylan warned him, with his eyes, not to speak about back at Yen Sid's study?

He didn't open his mouth. Araceli would tell him when she was ready. All he had to know is that they were the good guys. They were trying to do the right thing. If that right thing, and following Yen Sid's clues, would lead him to restoring Nico, he would join them in that effort… not like they ever bothered to ask him.

The fighting continued. Silas considered himself pretty in-shape, and had dabbled with many sports in his short life, from lacrosse to water polo. He regretted never getting into fencing, as Macie from sophomore year tried to encourage him to do, because these movements were unfamiliar and intensely tiring.

His forehead was dripping with sweat by the time they reached a set of obscenely tall double-doors. _How in the world_ , he thought, _does Mickey plan on opening these doors? Is there a mouse army hiding somewhere?_

No—if he was hiding any kind of army that _could_ have been helping them reach the keyhole, Silas was sure he would murder this mouse.

Rather, King Mickey saw something he didn't—a set of smaller, more reasonable, human-sized doors hidden in the whiteness of the gigantic doors. What could possibly be the purpose of that? He tried not to dwell as they squeezed through.

Silas always thought he was a pretty emotionally stable guy. He couldn't even remember the last time he got misty-eyed, so it was long before puberty. Still, seeing that large room, empty except for a single throne at the end and countless twirling, wandering Bolt Towers filling it to the brim, he thought he might cry. He could hardly handle the Shadows and few Soldiers that Araceli, Dylan, and Mickey left for him to deal with, and was sure he wouldn't come back alive from this.

"There are too many," Mickey said, gripping his Keyblade tightly. "The world is falling fast. We need to get to the keyhole _now_."

"We'll distract the Heartless. We're stronger fighters," Araceli said in that blunt honesty that stung a little bit, looking at Silas. "You have to get to the keyhole. Your Majesty, where is it?" she asked the king.

"The throne," he said. "Hurry!"

Silas's eyes blurred upon scanning the expanse of the room. It was much longer than he initially thought, and there were Bolt Towers absolutely covering the place. He couldn't see more than a foot of bare wall between them. There was no way he could make it through there without thinning the crowd out a little bit.

" _Hurry_!" Araceli repeated in a hiss. Silas had no choice.

He swallowed the lump in his throat, and ran forth.

With every step he took, he shouldered another Heartless. By the time he made it halfway through the room, narrowly avoiding every body slam-style hit from the creatures, his shoulders were so tender that Silas was sure he'd make a very delicious dinner. It came to the point where he was swinging around his Keyblade madly, with arms burning from overuse, in every which direction just to deflect any potential attacks.

Just a few feet away from the throne, a Bolt Tower made contact.

It hit his lower back, and sent Silas flying to his left. He bit his lip hard upon impact, and a howling pain erupted in his spine. _I'm going to be paralyzed for life_ , he thought, lying on the ground, barely gripping his weapon in shock. _I'm going to roll around in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. I can't fight like this. I'll never save Nico._

His leg twitched, and he found he could still move his legs, if barely. Just as he managed to pull his feet under him to stand, another Bolt Tower smacked him dead in the chest.

Silas cried out. This had to be over.

It happened again, unbidden. Thundaga. Streaks of powerful light fell from above him, and struck all the Heartless surrounding him. In an instant, they all disappeared, creating a ten-foot opening all around him. Silas, once more, felt close to tears, but didn't have time to question that ability or try to recreate it. He could only point his Keyblade, weakly, at the distant throne, and hope it would work.

Just like with the keyhole in Traverse Town, his Keyblade, apparently, did not actually need to be inserted into the keyhole. A familiar beam of light shot out and hit directly in the back of the chair. A large keyhole seemed to glow where it hit, before disappearing along with the shining beam of light.

He did it. He sealed the world.

Silas could only lie there, struggle to ignore the pain, and wait for the others to clear the room.

It wasn't until only a few Heartless remained that Silas heard Araceli scream, "Your Highness!"

The boy struggled to push himself to his feet, ignoring the throbbing pain in his limbs, and stumbled across the room to where Dylan relentlessly shot at the remaining Heartless, sweat rolling down his forehead, and Araceli kneeled next to a small Mickey, looking somehow even smaller with his mouth slightly opened and his eyes closed.

"Did you do it?" Araceli asked, looking over her shoulder as Silas approached.

He nodded and knelt down next to Mickey with her. She let out a relieved sigh and took away her fingers from where she checked his pulse on his neck. "He's alive, and breathing," Araceli said. "He's been knocked out."

"Do that thing you did for my leg," Silas suggested.

Araceli must have been desperate for an answer, because she actually took his suggestion seriously, and motioned with her staff, abnormally tall against her now that she was hunched over the King. The same beautiful greenery floated above Mickey, drawn out of nothing, with flowers, like bells, chiming above him and raining him in light over his whole body.

Silas thought he saw Mickey's nose twitched, but wrote it off as his imagination when two full minutes passed without another movement.

"He's alive, is the main thing," Silas finally said.

Once Dylan finally finished off the remaining Bolt Towers, Araceli lifted Mickey and carried him, bridal-style, out of the large throne room where Silas and Dylan followed. He didn't have any time to focus on the details of the castle itself, other than being big, white, and empty.

They reached, eventually, another white room with gold accents and thousands of books perched upon wooden shelves. The roof was made of glass, and images of what looked like King Mickey in various costumes (but were, likely, his relatives) hung in ornate portraits around the room.

Silas was sure he was seeing King Mickey in drag perusing one of the books: he wore a reddish-pink dress, flouncy and ruffled at the edges of the bell-shaped skirt, puffy sleeves, white gloves, and a golden crown with a ruby mouse silhouette in the center. He had slightly longer eyelashes.

"Queen Minnie," Araceli said. She must have thought she would find the mouse, who must have been King Mickey's wife, here.

The mouse's face turned from happy surprise to horror when she saw her husband lying in Araceli's arms.

The next hour was a blur of medics, nurses, and servants rushing in and out of the library. Minnie fretted about some people named Donald and Goofy who weren't around to protect him, but Silas knew that if Araceli couldn't have protected Mickey, nobody could have.

Eventually, they got Mickey set up in his chambers, and Minnie, with a distant voice, showed them each to individual rooms they could use to sleep the rest of the night before they continued on with their journey the next day. Araceli whispered to the boys to wait until tomorrow to tell Minnie about their deal with the King. The wounds were too fresh, and she was frantic with worry over her comatose husband.

Minnie, dropping Silas off last, gave him a small goodnight at the door and apologized for the size of the room. This room alone was probably bigger than his entire upstairs back home. He'd never seen a bed so white, so big, and so absolutely sleep-able. Before she could turn and leave, he said, "Do you think he'll be okay?"

The Queen smiled at him, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. "Mickey's been through much worse," she told him in that squeaky voice of his. "I know he'll make it out of this."

Silas never really saw two people in love. He'd had plenty of hook-ups in high school, and watched, with distant scrutiny, Nico's mom shack up with a guy she had been seeing, but never really allowed himself to consider that "love."

He saw his father's gruesome divorce with his mother. He saw his sister fall in and out of relationships like a flittering bird between the trees. He saw no constants of two consenting adults together for the foreseeable future.

Silas always assumed love was something you knew when you saw it, but with each passing year, grew less and less confident in its existence in the first place, or, at the very least, his own ability to love.

But there it was. Minnie had never once, in the short hour that she fussed with her ailing husband, used the word "love," or even expressed any sort of romantic affection toward her husband. No, she doted over the stretcher, squeaking to him words of encouragement as he was lifted away to the bed. She pulled the covers just a couple of inches higher over him to cover his chest. She said he would make it out. If it wasn't love, it was the closest thing he'd ever seen.

xxx

Silas hollered at the top of his lungs, whooping with laughter as he hung up his phone.

"So you failed, huh?" Nico asked with faux-concern spreading across his features. "You failed every class."

"Asshole. Just barely skated by with government, but I passed! I'm graduating!"

Nico wanted to tell his friend that there was never a doubt in his mind, but knew that both of them would know that was a lie. Plenty of all-nighters the week leading up to finals week had prepared that boy for his tests, but he just didn't perform well under pressure (at least, not under academic pressure).

"Way to find out two days before graduation."

Silas grinned back at him. He had just received the news from his mother; though he didn't live there most of the time, for some reason, her house was still the high school's mailing address. She'd finally returned home from the late shift at the hospital where she worked as an x-ray technician and was able to open Silas's report card for him.

"Now we're definitely going."

Nico thought himself a bad person for having wished for half a second that Silas got some bad news so he didn't have to be dragged to yet another high school party. He figured, at least, he had two more days for it to not be creepy.

"Why can't we just hang out at your place and play video games or something?"

"Because Kat Saunders isn't at my place playing video games."

Nico grumbled, "If she was, you'd have a lot more problems than just your grades." He stared out of the passenger window as Silas revved up the engine to head toward Chris's party. As far as Nico knew, it was just a small get-together at the forest preserve by his house, but he was pretty sure Silas was only saying that to get him to come.

It worked. They parked outside of Chris's abnormally large house, as he had instructed them to do, and Nico counted no fewer than twelve other cars hanging out on the street alone. His face scrunched up as he and Silas made their way toward a clearing in the trees across from his front yard. A ten minute walk, and they would be deep into the forest preserve. Rangers strictly enforce a curfew at the park, otherwise, they could have parked there.

Another really good reason to stay home and play video games.

"This seems like a stupid idea," Nico finally said about five minutes into their silent walk, garnished with the scent of wet dirt and pine cones.

"'I will experience something new, at least once a day,'" Silas repeated to him in a mildly mocking tone. "'I will break the cycle of loss—'"

Nico shoved his arm. "Shut up," he muttered. "I was thirteen."

"You were onto something."

He stuffed his hands into his jeans. His curly, brown hair was starting to impede his vision; he made a mental reminder to try and get it cut before graduation day. His mom would have a fit if she couldn't see her son's eyes in his graduation pictures.

"You still owe me fifty dollars," he reminded the other one.

Silas promptly ignored him. A faint twang of metallic guitars was audible from where they were in the forest; no doubt, it was Chris's favorite rock music playing on repeat to a crowd of teenagers who really just wanted to listen to techno or dubstep, but were able to tolerate his nonsense for all the beer he provided.

Eight or nine people sat around a bonfire in the very center of the clearing, about two of which Nico vaguely recognized, and the rest of the attendees stood, mingling, dancing, screaming, singing, sipping from red cups, and otherwise messing around in the surrounding area.

Jason and Mark seemed to be attempting to climb a tree on the periphery of the clearing. Nico had no idea why Chris would invite those two assholes to the party, but didn't really care. Jason caught sight of Silas from across the party, said something to his companion, and looked away. The two continued to climb the tree. Randall was nowhere to be seen; the last few months, Nico hadn't seen the kid around the other two musketeers.

That made him happy.

"Yo Dennis," Silas said to a brunet boy sitting around the fire. He stood, and the two did that thing that all the cool guys did, where they went in to shake each other's hands, but instead pulled each other into a half-hug and hit the other one on the back. Nico wasn't sure he'd ever done it before. Silas certainly didn't do it with him. He could really become a different person around the right person.

"Silas, man, what's up?" he asked. He slurred his words slightly.

"Not much. Where's Chris?"

"Should be out here somewhere," mused Dennis, adjusting his blue checked baseball cap. "Probably messing with that ancient boom box of his."

Silas grinned, and laughed. "Thanks, man. Let's have a drink later."

"Sure."

This Dennis person sat back down next to a girl Nico knew from math class, and Silas, led the two of them through the crowd and away from the uncomfortable warmth of the roaring fire (not that the body heat made the rest of the clearing any cooler). Silas seemed to follow the volume of the music, and stopped at a small foldable table set up near the back of the party, where a big, bulky, black music player was set up and plugged into some battery pack.

Chris was an interesting-looking guy. Nico couldn't help but hate him, sometimes, because he looked like the biggest loser in high school, but had the most friends. It wasn't even because he was rich—which probably helped—but he was genuinely a really cool guy. He liked music nobody listened to, he introduced himself to everybody, and he found something in common with absolutely every man, woman, and child he met.

He had big, horn-rimmed glasses, wore a yellow and black plaid flannel shirt buttoned up to the top two buttons, slicked-down, pale blond hair, and business casual shoes. Someone like Chris was easily on the fast-track to a business fraternity and a reputable job as a middle manager in a big industry.

Nico tried to push out the negative thoughts. After all, after greeting Silas, Chris smiled at Nico and said, "Hey, dude! How's gymnastics?"

Unable to help it, he smiled back. "Season just ended. Got a 26 at the last meet."

"Sweet!" He said, "Glad you guys could make it."

"Wouldn't miss it," Silas said. "Hey, is Kat here?"

Chris scratched his head. "Kat Traeger?"

"No, Saunders. Kat Saunders."

The other boy nodded, skipping to the next song on his boom box. A bunch of people audibly groaned. "Yeah, pretty sure I saw her wandering into the woods with Caitlin. They thought they saw a rabbit. Probably back by now." His grin turned somewhat sinister. "Why do you ask?"

Silas put a hand on Nico's shoulder, and said what he really prayed he wouldn't say. "Nico's going to lose his virginity today!"

Chris stared at him for a moment, and then howled in laughter.

"What the fuck?!" Nico asked, knowing Silas would reconsider his candor if he cussed. He tried to avoid swearing unless absolutely necessary—that way, Silas would know when he was really angry. It amused and frustrated him that he moderated his swearing habits in order to better deal with his best friend.

When he bothered to look away from the other two for a moment, he saw Kat Saunders.

She was the kind of girl most guys at school overlooked, but Silas must have saw something special in her, because he insisted that the two would be perfect together. Apparently, she was a secret nerd; Kat had confessed to Silas one day during lunch that she wanted to be home watching this "really lame sci-fi show" because the holiday special was releasing that day and her friends on her favorite forum were awful about spoilers.

But Nico had seen Kat Saunders before. She was very pretty, in her own unconventional way; she had a beauty mark just below her left eye, which was brown. Her right eye was a greenish-hazel, which most people didn't see right off the bat but always baffled Nico. Her honey-blond hair hung in loose waves, tumbling over her shoulder. Kat usually pinned it back on one side of her head to mimic the shaved look. She was a very slight girl, without much of a figure to speak of, but a very cute face.

Nico was willing to give it a shot, both because he trusted Silas, and because if someone had the guts to admit something so conventionally damning to one of the most popular guys in school, she's definitely worth the time.

With a drink and a friendly shove, Silas finally convinced Nico to go over to her. Caitlin Zimmermann, who was basically attached to the other girl at the hip, hung around while he tried to strike up conversation with the girl, but left after a few minutes of the two of them diving deep into a theoretical conversation about the stars.

Nico thought they were all individual suns. Kat was pretty sure they were all enormous balls of gas. It was an interesting theory that made Nico blush and laugh. When they got to the topic of deep space exploration, she'd put a thin hand on his arm as she giggled at his joke about spaceships. He knew that was a good sign. Girls touch you when they like you, right?

He caught sight of Silas across the party. His friend was dancing close to some brunette girl—Holly, maybe? Sophie? Maria? He did always say he would reconcile with her. Silas sometimes referred to her as "the one that got away," but Nico thought that might be a bit dramatic.

Holly was his newest target. Sophie was a girl who had a thing for him throughout all of high school that he kept on the hook just in case there was ever a school dance that he couldn't find another date to (and there never was). Maria was a pretty caramel-skinned girl from Nico's physics class who he was convinced had a picture of Silas on her phone somewhere, unless he had imagined his best friend's face on the screen.

Nico's stomach turned over. There was always a new girl.

"What do you think?"

Nico turned back to Kat and realized he hadn't even been listening.

xxx

The white-haired boy was covered in a thick layer of sweat as he bolted up from bed, the intense sun shining in through the gaps of the black curtains in the room. He had to remind himself of where he was: Villain's Vale. Nissa brought him here the night before. His limbs and eyes were heavy with sleep.

"Good morning," said Nissa from the door, which must have been what woke him up. She carried a mug of some kind of steaming liquid in each of her hands. "How did you sleep?" she asked, cocking her head to the left.

"Great," he lied. He didn't want to tell her about the dreams.

"Awesome. Well, you should know something about me," she said, leaning against the door jamb. "When I'm carrying coffee, I want a favor. This is my ulterior motive coffee. Mind coming downstairs with me and drinking it and hearing me out?"

He wasn't sure he would like coffee—it certainly _smelled_ good—but he still felt in no position to refuse Nissa anything, so he nodded, and the girl closed the door and left him to change. For what felt like an hour, he stared at the gold eyes, curly, white hair and pale skin staring back at him in the dresser mirror. He tried not to think about those odd dreams.

 _Day by day_ , he told himself. He'd take it day by day.


	8. Chapter VII - White

**(A/N: Woo. Okay. Getting this out early because I won't have much time later in the week (busy at work) to get anything out, most likely. I'm also excited, because the ball's finally rolling. Same issues as last time; I'm still trying to work out pacing and make my writing elegant despite feeling rushed… I think I did a better job of it this time, but I have a lot of work to do.**

 **Also, quickly jumping in here to say that I adore the band that I used as the lyrics this chapter, and it was really hard to pick just one song because I think the entire album I referenced fits a specific character** _ **very**_ **well (it'd be pretty obvious if you're even a super lazy reader). So I highly recommend listening to the whole thing as you read this. If not the whole thing, at least the songs "Feels Like a Lie," "In Clover," "Traveling at the Speed of Light," "Bad Dreams," and the one listed below. That's all. Enjoy!)**

 **CHAPTER VII**

 **WHITE**

 _Last night I killed a ghost that was following me,  
Its spooky fingers distributed 'round the murder scene,  
And there was nothing beautiful inside the shell like it had seemed.  
Everything was white, yeah, everything was white, everything was white._

Joywave, "Now"  
 _How Do You Feel Now?_

"Now," said Nissa, taking a small, wooden stick out of a blue box as they sat at the kitchen table. While it wasn't exactly pristine, the large cooking area looked quite usable—and it must have been, if she managed to brew them each coffee. She grabbed a cube of sugar from a tiny ceramic bowl sitting in the middle of the small, circular wooden table, and then another, and then another, and plopped them all individually into the steaming cup.

Stirring with the stick, she said, "What do I call you?"

The white-haired boy had an idea, but only shrugged. In his grand total of a single day of memory, he had collected various names from stray books, signs, and his own dreams, but none of them felt like _his_ , and he was only half-sure they were all real, human names.

"Try the coffee," she insisted.

He lifted the cup to his lips. While it steamed, the liquid didn't sear him when he tipped the cup back.

The taste, however, was vile. It was bitter and oaky and somehow nutty, all at the same time. It was potentially the most disgusting thing he had ever tasted, though he wasn't sure what else he had ever tasted, save for the delicious dinner he had been given the night before. Still, he didn't want to offend Nissa. He still felt very obligated to her.

So he tipped the mug back and poured the coffee down his throat, gulp by bitter gulp.

Nissa laughed. "Wow," she said. "I need the caffeine, but I can't stomach the stuff without sugar." She paused. "My boyfriend used to take it with only cream. I think he was crazy."

Her friendly grin became distant, like a costume mask, and she continued to stir her coffee, in which the sugar could have dissolved four times by now. The boy's cup was empty by the time she finally lifted the turquoise mug to her mouth, and a flicker of a real smile returned.

"I could call you 'coffee,' but that seems insulting, somehow," said Nissa, letting her fingers intertwine and resting her head on her hands, propped up on the table by her elbows. "It's not the most attractive sounding name, either, and you're a rather attractive person."

The boy wasn't sure whether he could blush to begin with, but was sure he would, if he could. It was a rather sweet thing to say, especially coming from such a beautiful woman.

"What about 'Ghost?'" she finally said, letting her palms fall decisively to the face of the table. "It seems fitting, to me. You've got white hair, and your outfit is all white."

"Ghosts aren't white," he said, blinking through his confusion.

"No," she said, "but the ones in Halloween Town are!" She made circles out of the thumb and forefingers of her hands and put them over her eyes, laughing gently. The boy smiled, though he didn't know what was so funny. He wanted to be someone she could smile and laugh with, but they came from two different worlds: hers, the normal one, where you have a memory of who you are, who raised you, and where you grew up, and his: a vast emptiness where memories are like a leaking pipe beneath a sink from which you can't find the source, because everything is damp.

"Okay," he said. "Ghost."

"For now," she said. "Until we think of something better."

"Or my real name?" he asked.

Nissa frowned, taking another sip of her coffee, and putting it back down. "Ghost, I have a lot to tell you," she said. "But before I do, I could really use a favor from you."

Ghost's only clear, continuous memories were of Nissa caring for him, clothing him, feeding him, and giving him a place to rest. It only made sense to do honor by those memories by helping the woman in whatever way possible. "What do you need?"

"There is a woman out there," she said, "who I know very well. We used to be very close. Something took us separate ways." Nissa stopped for a moment to look over at the empty wall to her left, before returning her gaze to Ghost and saying, "I have reason to believe she was responsible for a great tragedy. She has to be stopped."

"By stopped, you mean…?"

Nissa squeezed her eyes shut. He could see small tears beading up at the outermost corners of her eyes. "She has to die."

Why did Nissa cry? Ghost couldn't tell. He assumed there were probably a lot of emotions swirling around in her right now, but he couldn't really conceptualize them. He figured it would be difficult to get away with killing a person, and didn't know what kind of emotions it would bring up in _him_ , but if it had to be done, it had to be done.

"How do I kill her?" Ghost asked.

Nissa cleared her throat. "Ghost, I need you to hold out your dominant hand."

He knew what that was without having to think about it, and held out his left hand. Nissa instructed him to summon something to it—she told him he had a weapon when she found him unconscious in the middle of Radiant Garden, and it disappeared when he awoke. She was sure it would come back to him if he summoned it.

So, silently, he asked for his weapon. He _wanted_ it. He _expected_ it in his hand.

It came. What appeared in his hand didn't look like a weapon at all, but an oversized key. The pointed, golden hilt fit well in his hand, and was warm against his palm, as though he'd been holding it the whole time. The entire golden length seemed so familiar to him, after his eyes and his clothing, and was interrupted only by black, spiked guards, and three rings—two smaller and one larger—which seemed to orbit around it. At the very end, four black spikes protruded out of what looked like a compass rose. A small keychain with a tiny star dangled just below his hand.

"That is a Keyblade," Nissa told him. "It's a very powerful weapon. She won't be able to stand a chance against it."

Somehow, Ghost knew she was right. It was a short Keyblade, but it was heavy, and sharp. If nothing else, it was a good bludgeoning device. This would do the job.

"Where is she?" he asked. "What's her name?"

"I've been told she was last seen en route to a place called Disney Castle," said Nissa. "Her name is Araceli Capello."

xxx

Despite her fretting the night before, Queen Minnie joined Araceli, Dylan, and Silas down in the grand dining room the following morning for breakfast. Her servants had laid out quite the feast, containing everything from toast to fried chicken and waffles. Silas knew he should be polite in the presence of royalty, but hadn't realized how hungry he was until the delicious smells wafted through the room and his mouth began to water.

When was the last time he ate? He skipped dinner the night of the thunderstorm. Was it really a day and a half ago?

"Don't be shy," Minnie said to the group.

That was all Silas needed to hear. He snatched his empty, white china plate from in front of him and began piling at least three of everything in the serving plates between them atop it. There wasn't an inch of negative space left by the time he was done, and he was fairly sure his meal weighed more than a six month-old baby.

He started with the fried chicken, tearing at the meat between his teeth and savoring the salty, warm comfort food of his hometown. "I don't think he's eaten in a while," Araceli said by way of apology as she put a couple of small waffles on her own plate.

"Sh'ry," was all he could say before moving onto the first of three over-easy eggs.

"Don't be," Minnie said. "With Donald and Goofy gone, this is more food than Daisy, Mickey, and I can eat on our own."

"Your Highness—" Araceli began.

"Minnie," Queen Minnie corrected her, the same way her husband did, immediately following.

"Minnie," she corrected herself, "your husband and we actually made a deal before sealing the keyhole that he would help us find someone very important if we helped him save Disney Castle from the Heartless."

"Did he?" she asked, not with suspicion, but with curiosity. Was this queen ever malicious, or was it only Silas in this world who truly had a dark side?

Araceli explained how she and Dylan were told that a Keyblade wielder was wandering around Traverse Town, but they came upon Silas rather than the "Nico" that Yen Sid told them to look for. She told her how, confused, they returned to Yen Sid to find out what happened to Nico, but he was gone, and left behind a single letter than read "Sheridan."

The girl didn't leave out her theory about how she believed Yen Sid managed to escape out. She finally asked, "We needed his help finding someone named Sheridan. We don't have anything to work off of other than his name."

"And Nico," Silas said, managing to wait until he swallowed his food this time.

"And Nico," Araceli repeated. "The boy who we were _supposed_ to find. He's Silas's best friend. They lost their world together."

"We know he's probably still… asleep," Dylan said, who hadn't touched his own eggs since they sat down, and rather just managed to poke at them with his fork, "but is there anyway you can leave a message for King Mickey to help us find them, as soon as he heals?"

"I've been married to Mickey for a long time," said Minnie, placing her silverware back down to either side of her plate, and staring at them all with that same, unwavering smile. Silas put his own cutlery down, feeling like what she had to say was probably more important than his bagel and cream cheese. "It's a common misconception that all Daisy and I do are tend to the castle. My husband taught me quite a lot of what he learned from Yen Sid, including how to locate hearts."

Araceli was smiling, which was an accomplishment in and of itself. "No way!" Dylan half-shouted.

Minnie giggled. "Way. I may not be as powerful as Yen Sid, but I'm fully confident that my magical abilities match Mickey's." She scowled for a moment. "It may be harder to find Sheridan, seeing as you only know his name. But Nico should be much easier, since you were close and could tell me about him."

"Okay," said Araceli. "Thank you. Could we start with Sheridan?"

So she did. The Queen sat with her eyes closed for so long that Silas thought she might have fallen asleep at the table. However, a blue and green aura seemed to float around her head, haloing her like an angel. She squeezed her eyes tighter, and the aura seemed to thicken and darken, but not much else changed. Minnie sighed, opening her eyes, and shaking her head.

"I'm not sensing a Sheridan anywhere," she said with a frown. "Either he has hidden himself very well, or he's very far away."

"Go figure," Dylan mumbled, crossing his arms. "But if you couldn't find him, Mickey couldn't, either?"

Minnie shook her head. "I could have him try when he wakes up, but I don't think so. He will also be weak, then."

"Okay," Araceli said. "We'll have to start our search cold. Thank you, anyway."

"What about Nico?" Silas blurted. All heads snapped in his direction, and he realized he was half-standing. Like a person who applauded too early at an orchestral concert, he slowly sat back down and felt blood fill his cheeks.

"Of course," she said. "Tell me about him."

"Well," Silas mused, bouncing his right knee up and down. "His full name is Nicodemus Argyris. He's wicked smart. He knows, like, literally everything. I could ask him any question and he'll have the answer in, like, no time flat. He's, uh, he's kind of short and thin. Curly, dark brown hair, and gray eyes. Silverish, almost. He's really pale. Nico, uh, he uses a lot of really big words—like you, Araceli!—and listens to a lot of jazz music. He can be sort of all-over-the-place emotionally, but he's really logical. And," he laughed, "I don't think I've ever heard him say 'goodbye.' I'm just realizing this now. He always says 'see you later,' even to the checkout lady at the grocery store that he'll, like, never see again. Oh, and he's seventeen, but he'll be eighteen in a few months."

How long had he been talking? Silas's throat felt dry.

Minnie was grinning at him with a smile he hadn't seen before; normally, her smiles were friendly and gentle, but this one almost seemed to be holding back laughter, and not that malicious laughter like kids do after someone trips and falls in the hallway, but something joyous. "Nico sounds wonderful," she said.

Silas nodded. He was. "He's my best friend."

"Of course." Minnie looked at the other two, both of whom were looking down at their plates, before closing her eyes. The mist appeared around her head in less than a second this time around, and it wasn't five seconds before she opened her eyes, and laughed.

"He's right in this room," Minnie said. "I must be crazy… or tired. How can that be?"

But Silas was beaming like an idiot, and put his hand to his heart. He knew it. Nico's heart was safe inside his body. All he had to do now was find a way to restore him. His friend was safe; he wasn't a Heartless.

xxx

There they were. Araceli Capello, and the companion she was traveling with. He hadn't expected to see a third head there, but they brought someone else along for the journey.

Nissa wrapped his face up in white bandages, leaving only Ghost's eyes and the bottom of his nose so he could breathe properly. She'd told him he'd risk a lot by letting them see his face, both because then they would be able to recognize him anywhere, and for a reason she wasn't ready yet to divulge to him, but promised she would, later.

They exited the castle, chattering to themselves. Ghost was still in disbelief; he was told he was on the way to another world, and all he had to do was walk through this odd corridor, which he summoned without even having to try, upon Nissa's instruction. In less than a minute, he left Villain's Vale and was standing in a bright, spacious, green opening at the base of an impossibly large, white castle, peppered with animals made of grass and square bushes.

What an odd world, this was.

When they approached, Ghost summoned his Keyblade again. It was as easy as blinking. Why was it so easy?

Nissa insisted he name his Keyblade before he set out on his journey. She said that weapons with names are often treated more carefully, because people begin to humanize them. He wasn't sure he had humanized it yet, or ever could, but decided to call it Tramontane. It meant "Northern Wind." He didn't know how he knew that.

"Who are you?" came a voice. It was the boy with the auburn hair. Their faces were still too far away to see, but Ghost knew one of the boys had to be Dylan—and the woman could be no one other than Araceli. She was exactly how Nissa described her.

Her brown hair was only a shade darker than her skin, against which small, bluish-hazel eyes stood out brightly. Araceli was a tall woman, and around the same age as Nissa (perhaps in her late teens or early twenties), with somewhat muscular arms. Despite the somewhat masculine way she held herself, she wore a lovely, feminine gray dress with long sleeves and tall boots.

Ghost pointed his Keyblade at Araceli.

"Hey," said the blond boy immediately, summoning a Keyblade of his own. That was unexpected; his looked like a storm in the shape of key, wrapped in a ribbon and the deep gray of a cloud pregnant with rain. A weathervane adorned the top of the weapon, spinning in the gentle breeze of Disney Castle.

The other two swiftly summoned their own weapons out of thin air. Ghost didn't realize other weapons worked this way. Araceli carried a tall staff, silvery-white in color, which seemed to create more of a breeze around it, causing the blond boy's weathervane Keyblade to spin more rapidly. It ended in a crescent moon shape with a raw, clear geode in the center, glued into place with a silvery metal.

In a less elegant performance, the auburn-haired boy summoned a gun in a light blue color, wrecked with green scratch marks. It was a dangerous-looking thing, with a single large barrel in the center, and two smaller barrels on either side. The gun seemed somehow much larger than it had to be.

Nissa didn't tell him he would be against people who were heavily armed, but he trusted her that his Keyblade—that Tramontane—could do the job.

"Are you Araceli Capello?" he asked.

"Who's asking?"

So it _was_ her. Ghost would make this quick; he owed Nissa, and decided he didn't like the feeling of owing anybody. He rushed up to the group, surprising himself at how quickly he could run.

Araceli was fast, too. She side-stepped out of Tramontane's attack, and something red and hot—fire—shot out of the tip of her staff. With haste, he held up his Keyblade in front of his face, which managed to both deflect the burst of flame and stop it from burning off the bandages wrapped around his face.

Those bandages served a purpose Ghost hadn't expected; he felt anonymous. He felt safe. He felt he could do more, _be_ more, than he could be as the nameless boy with the white hair, lying uselessly in the center of a town courtyard.

"Who _are_ you?" asked the blond boy.

Ghost looked over at him. His stomach flipped over about a thousand times in one second. He knew this boy. He didn't know how, but he knew him. He knew his name, he knew his eyes, he knew his favorite food was hot dogs and he was afraid of thunderstorms. The boy's name was Silas.

A memory? A real memory? Was he sure?

That meant the remaining boy, of whom he had no memory, was Dylan. Nissa hadn't been expecting this Silas person to be with Araceli. What was going on?

He didn't want to dwell, and didn't have time to. Araceli shot another fireball at him, which he, again, deflected with Tramontane.

"Oh, hell no," said Dylan, pointing his gun at Ghost. He barely had enough time to react before a swarm of successive glowing bullets hit him faster than a machine gun and knocked him back hundreds of feet. He landed back-first in the topiary castle in the middle of the courtyard.

"Sheridan?" called Silas, the blond boy.

 _Sheridan_. Something about that name sounded right. It sounded perfectly fitting. He liked it—he liked it much better than Ghost.

No doubt he was not the Sheridan they were looking for, but what harm could it do for him, "Yes," he said. "My name is Sheridan."

"No fucking way," Dylan said, breathily letting his gun fall to his side.

Araceli's left hand curled into a fist. Her knuckles were white where her skin stretched as she squeezed with all her might the length of her staff. "You bastard! Where is Yen Sid?" she shouted, rushing at him.

This was his chance. She was blinded by rage. Nissa said that could happen. Keyblade forward, he tried to imitate what she had done—he summoned fire.

It worked. The burst of flame smacked Araceli square in the chest, and, mid-run, she fell to the ground. Her companion, Dylan, stayed back, as if dumbfounded that Araceli could be knocked down in the first place. Silas, however, approached.

In one swift motion, he held his Keyblade up to Ghost's—no, Sheridan's—neck. The point prodded at the space just below his Adam's apple.

"Sheridan," he said, in a low voice. "Where is Yen Sid?"

Who was this Yen Sid person they kept mentioning? That didn't seem like a real name. He wondered why he couldn't think of anything else at such a perilous time; wasn't he supposed to be afraid? Shouldn't he have been panicking and trying to defend himself from this boy who clearly had him in a compromising position?

"There's something wrong with me," he whispered and, for the first time, the weight of those words began to truly press down on him.

"What?" asked Silas, but he ignored him.

Sheridan back out, out of reach of the Keyblade's teeth, and glanced back at Araceli. She'd pushed herself back to her feet, and was joined by Dylan, both of them pointing their weapons threateningly at Ghost— _Sheridan_ , he corrected himself. Perhaps he could take them all individually, but not together like this.

Willing another portal, another Corridor of Darkness, to appear behind him, he back away another pace and hoped Nissa would forgive him for this. "I'll see you later," he mumbled, backing into the portal, and meant it.

He could see Araceli rushing for the opening of the Corridor as her two companions stood, open-mouthed, and her hand disappearing behind the closing entrance just before she could squeeze the tip of her finger through.


	9. Chapter VIII - Denial

**(A/N: Going full-on angst for this chapter's lyrics. No judgments. I love 21P. But you'll definitely get a different feel from this song than you have been getting.**

 **Shorter chapter today. This is actually the length I'd like my chapters to be all the time, but I wory it's not long enough for most people. Anyway, things are finally getting exciting! For me, as a writer, anyway. I don't know if it's exciting as a reader. I'm doing this for me, anyway. But I still do hope you like it!)**

 **CHAPTER VIII: DENIAL**

 _I wanted to be a better brother, better son.  
Wanted to be a better adversary to the evil I have done.  
I have none to show to the one I love  
But deny, deny, denial._

Twenty One Pilots, "Polarize"  
 _Blurryface_

"And you recognized him?" Nissa asked, frowning, lying down on the black leather couch. Her straw-blonde hair spilled over the plush arm like a golden waterfall. "You're sure?" she asked.

Sheridan nodded. "I'm positive. I knew his name. It's Silas."

"How?" she asked.

He chewed on the inside of his lower lip. He wasn't prepared to talk about it yet for fear of coming across as insane. Instead, Sheridan said, "I just knew him. I'm not sure."

Nissa righted herself and smoothed down the wrinkles in her shorts, placing her feet on the ground. "Ghost, come sit," she told him, motioning to the empty love seat perpendicular to the sofa. He did. "I'm not upset with you. To be honest with you, I didn't expect you to be successful the first time around. But I did hope the confidence would help you."

"It did," Sheridan assured her.

"To be truly powerful, you have to understand the 'why' of a few things. Why you can summon the portal to the Corridors of Darkness. Why you recognized that boy. Why you woke up with little to no memories in a random town."

She had the answers this whole time? This annoyed Sheridan slightly, but he only nodded.

"When a person loses their heart to the Heartless—these creatures that skulk around in the darkness—they leave their body behind, and it becomes something entirely different. Depending on a few factors, you could be a vaguely humanoid… monster, for lack of a better word, or you could be essentially an entirely different person, devoid of emotions. We call those Nobodies."

Sheridan frowned. "So I'm a Nobody."

She tried to smile, and the corners of her lips turned up, but it still somehow didn't turn into anything resembling happiness. "You catch on quick. Yes, you're a Nobody. I don't know whose Nobody you are, or where your Heartless is. I don't know anything about you, to be honest, except what I've seen in the last two days. But I do know that if you're sure you recognize that Silas person, your Somebody almost surely knew him."

"Huh." Sheridan crossed his arms over his chest. "So he could tell me who my Somebody is?"

"Was," Nissa corrected him. "You're not a Somebody unless you have both a body and a heart. Without your heart, which is likely drowning in darkness by now, you're only a body. In order to become a Somebody again, you have to pull your heart out of the darkness and join it with your body."

"What is the darkness?"

Nissa laughed, grabbing a crimson throw pillow from the edge of the couch and hugging it to her chest, like a child at a sleepover. "That's a really good question, Ghost. People have different theories. Some say, since your heart is your emotions and instincts, that darkness is the evil instincts and negative emotions. But darkness is a thing—it's a pulling force. It's energy. And it's not all negative. In excess, maybe, it's dangerous—but so is light. What happens when you stare at the sun for too long?" she asked.

Sheridan knew the answer to this question, though he wasn't quite sure how he knew. Probably his Somebody once knew. "You go blind," he said.

"Exactly. What happens when all the lights are out and your bedroom is entirely dark?"

He was starting to understand. "You're blind."

The girl nodded, blowing a stray lock of hair out of her face. "Both leave you blind and unsafe. When a room is half-lit, you can see well enough around you, and your eyes are safe. Which is a long, drawn-out metaphor, sure, but you need a balance of the forces of light and darkness in your heart, too. But nobody's ever lost their heart to the light."

Sheridan grinned. "So darkness _is_ more dangerous."

"Maybe in certain ways." Nissa paused a beat. "But if you learn to harness it, it can be a powerful weapon. Being without a heart yourself, you have nothing to fear by using the darkness to the best of your abilities. You don't have a heart to corrupt."

There had to be something positive in this concerning you-don't-have-a-heart nonsense. "Okay," was all he could think to say.

"I'll teach you what I know about the darkness," Nissa promised, "and how to use your Keyblade, and magic. The best I can. I still have a heart, so I need to be careful. But I still need you to defeat Araceli. She's dangerous."

He nodded at his mentor. "Okay. After Araceli is taken care of, can we find my Somebody?"

Nissa tilted her head to the left once, and nodded at him. "Sure, Ghost." she said.

"One more thing." He paused. "I'd like it if you called me Sheridan."

He instantly regretted this request, which he was so sure was harmless. Nissa's eyes widened to perfect circles, and her coral lips hung open. She tried to say something, but no voice came out. Under her breath, Nissa mumbled something about the bathroom, dropped the pillow to the ground, and scurried out of the room.

In the short time he knew her, Sheridan had never seen her so frantic. He spent the next twenty minutes lying on the couch, staring at the ceiling, trying to understand what horrible thing he had just done.

xxx

"Well," Silas grumbled, "I guess that answers that."

Araceli wordlessly started up the Gummi Ship, and they rose into the air with the roar of the engine. Like clockwork, Dylan let his eyelids droop closed, but his sleep looked anything but peaceful. In fact, the boy seemed to scrunch up his forehead in his sleep, as if the confusion of his waking life had somehow seeped into his dreams.

"That's not the Sheridan you knew from school, right?" Silas asked.

"Hm? No," Araceli only said, shaking her head. Her forehead was also creased as she focused perhaps too hard on the sky in front of her. It wasn't long before they broke the atmosphere and the universe around them was black and peppered in fairy lights.

"Something's not right about Sheridan," she finally said after ten minutes of flying. It was then that Silas realized he didn't even know where they were headed. "He wasn't a very good fighter. Why did Yen Sid lead us to him?"

Silas shook his head. "Your guess 's as good as mine. Prolly better." He paused. "We should search for him, right?"

"I'm not so sure anymore." Araceli glanced over at the sleeping Dylan and said, "He was going after us. Me, specifically. It's all very possible that Yen Sid's message wasn't a clue, but a warning."

That word brought with it some seriously nasty implications. Silas had no interest in thinking too hard about it, and crossed his arms behind his head, leaning back. "I guess all we can do is wait until we find him again."

"At this point," Araceli agreed with a nod, which made Silas smile. She was so smart, brave, and powerful; he couldn't help but crave her approval, even though he wouldn't quite admit it to himself. Part of him wanted her to validate him, and the other part of him wanted to get to know who she was _behind_ that intelligence and power that he so envied: he wanted to be her friend.

"Tell me about yourself," he said, without thinking. It was Silas's go-to line. He could start a conversation with almost anybody by asking them to talk about themselves. It's not that he thought everyone was narcissistic, it's just that they were. Everyone loves talking about themselves to anyone who will listen. Silas was pretty sure there were people out there who loved hearing about others, too. He couldn't be the only one.

Araceli didn't say anything for a minute, and just looked back at Silas, as if she thought he was playing a trick on her. This made Silas sad; he knew that look of disbelief. That was the look Nico gave all the time. Some people just can't believe in kindness without an ulterior motive. That was the product of years of bullying. He hated thinking of Nico in that way, and he hated the look Araceli gave him.

Still, she spoke. "I grew up in a small-town world called Sublime Valley. Pretty quiet. I mostly focused on school and soccer. My grandpa raised me on his own, but passed away three days before my fourteenth birthday. I found an abandoned Gummi Ship shortly thereafter and left. I traveled to different worlds for a while, saved up money for my staff, and learned magic. Yen Sid helped me fine-tune it for a time. I met Dylan at Twilight Town about a year ago. He didn't have any parents, either, and got around by hitching rides on Gummi Ships. I actually found him on mine."

She paused.

After a moment of silence, Silas realized he wasn't getting anything else out of her. He was, frankly, surprised that she said so much at all. Maybe she wanted him to know her. Maybe he was overthinking things.

"Now, tell me about yourself," she said.

It was truly the mark of a good-hearted person when they turned around and asked the same question back after going over their life's story. In fact, that was Silas's main criteria for friendship. He called it the Question Test. Araceli passed with flying colors.

"My mom and dad got divorced when I was pretty little," he said, "so my dad mostly raised my sister and me. My mom had some visitation, so I saw her, too, but my dad was the real deal. I met Nico—my friend you guys were looking for—pretty young, too. We're best friends. Went to school together for… uh, basically the rest of our lives, as this point. He's like, really fucking smart. Probably as smart as you. No offense."

Araceli smiled.

"Anyway, he'd help me with my homework. But Nico's pretty sheltered, so I helped him by showing him parties and how to have fun. I don't think he wanted me to, but it's really all I could do for him." Silas grinned back at her. "Anyway, that's really it. I play a lot of video games and have a lot of friends, and I'm probably going to be a coach one day. A baseball coach, I think. I haven't really thought about it. And, well… I'm not sure what my world getting sucked up by darkness means for me, anyway."

Araceli said, "Nico sounds like a good friend."

Silas nodded. "He is. He's great. Which is why I have to find him."

"Can I give you some advice?" asked Araceli, half-steering the Gummi Ship and half looking back at him in the back seat.

"Sure."

"Keep him good. Don't let him go down a bad path. Don't encourage destructive behavior, and don't imitate it; you'll create an echo chamber, and that is dangerous. It's nice that you want to show him the other side of life—the fun side, one would say—but never let it get out of hand. Once you lose him to the darkness, you'll never get him back."

There was pain in her voice. For once, Silas didn't know how to deal with what she said. Sure, he showed his friend weed and encouraged him to hold off on his homework and had definitely been violent in front of him before, but was that so bad? Could his own actions really make him lose his friend to the darkness?

He wasn't sure. Silas thought maybe she was projecting, but said instead a graceful, "Thanks," and leaned forward again in his chair. Prying as subtly as possible, he asked, "Do you have a best friend like that?" he asked.

Araceli looked over at Dylan, and said, "I don't. Dylan is the closest." She paused. "He's far too aloof to have conversations like these."

"I didn't think you would have a conversation like this, either, to be honest," Silas said with a laugh. "Did you ever have a friend you could talk to like this?"

"I did," said Araceli, and that's all she said.

He'd pushed too far. Silas always knew when he pushed too far, and he knew how to reverse the situation. "Well, that's no problem," he said. "I'll be your best friend. Tell me anything you want."

It worked. She smiled again. "Sure, Silas. I will."

xxx

"I can't believe you actually fucking did it," Silas laughed, tipping Nico's cap over so it got in his eyes. He complained in a grumble beneath his breath as he fixed the graduation hat, but he was grinning from ear to hear. Silas could practically hear the adrenaline swimming through his best friend's veins, but could have guessed just from the way he was flushed pink all over.

"My mom's gonna kill me," he said. Around them, various other classmates were gathering in group and getting their pictures taken by proud-looking, middle-aged, graying men and women. Silas had to admit that, as stupid as he thought an eighth grade graduation was, he did feel pretty accomplished.

"Can't wait until high school graduation," he said.

Nico side-eyed him, still adjusting his cap from Silas's sneak attack. "Really?" he asked. "You?"

"Don't look so surprised. I just want to get out of school for good." He could tell Nico a lot of things, but he wasn't about to tell his friend how much he actually enjoyed this ceremony. It's not that he would hold if over his head, but he might expect Silas to actually get excited about reading and schoolwork, which was just not going to happen.

"What about college?" asked Nico.

"What about it?" Silas asked, scanning the crowd for his dad. He spotted him, still trying to make it down the bleacher steps with his older sister, as they'd chosen to sit all the way at the top. Nico's mom was still chatting with her boyfriend, flipping through the twelve or so pictures they just took of Silas and Nico. He planned to stay by his friend's side until he decided to go home so he didn't have to see Silas taking pictures with other kids in class. He was almost sure Nico would get a picture request from some people after his big graduation speech, or at least from that girl, Kat, who stared at him all the time.

"You're not going?" Nico asked.

"I dunno. Guess it depends how I do in high school, right?"

"Guess so," said Nico.

By the time Silas's family finally made it down the bleachers and met up with him, Nico's mom and her boyfriend carted him away. It wasn't a big deal for Silas; he knew he'd see his friend that night, at the latest. He wanted to keep Nico worrying that his mother would be pissed, so he was in for a pleasant surprise, so he said nothing.

Silas was grabbed left and right by classmates—especially female—for pictures. He made a different goofy face in each and every one of them. There was one girl who asked him for a picture named Maria. He recognized her from school, but had never seen her all done-up like this, with a small, black dress beneath her graduation gown, strappy heels, and heavy smoky eyes. She was cute, he noticed, with her freckles and curly hair.

He told Nico about it that night, as they climbed on top of Silas's roof in order to shoot off a few small fireworks he swiped from his uncle, the pyrotechnic. Clearly uncomfortable with the idea, but still riding off of the adrenaline of graduation, Nico's head was covered in a big, black hood from his hoodie (which was probably for the best; his haircut was a tragedy).

"Maria's out of your league," he'd said in a huff, hugging his knees to his chest. The two of them sat on the cool black roof and stared out into the nighttime sky. This far out into town, the closest house was a mile away, and you could see every star.

"Probably," said Silas, refusing to let Nico's negativity get to him. "Whatever, I have all summer to think about and fantasize over her so I'm sick of her by the time the first day of school comes along." He laid back and rested his head on his arms.

"Gross," Nico said. "But seriously, leave Maria alone."

"Why?"

"She's a nice girl. You'll corrupt her."

"Like I corrupted you?" Silas gave his friend a toothy, if somewhat menacing, grin. Nico shoved his right shoulder so he nearly rolled over on the roof. He wanted to shout at his friend, but could only laugh. "Do you like her?" he asked.

"What? No," his best friend replied. He seemed genuine, but Silas couldn't help but believe Nico was just in denial. Sure, his balls still hadn't dropped, but in all of Silas's years of friendship with the boy, he could never remember him having a crush on anybody. He thought maybe Nico was just keeping it from him. Silas wasn't a great secret-keeper.

"Hey Silas," said Nico after a moment of silence.

"Yeah?"

"Go to college," he said. "I'll help you study. Let's go to the same university."

Silas craned his head and looked up at his friend, still sitting, staring out into the pasture. His grandpa's tractor had been left out there years ago and nobody bothered to come pick it up. The small, red barn in the distance was alight with a lantern where his mother's boyfriend was helping them tend to the cows. The tiny flicker of light reflected in his eyes like two small sparks. He pulled his hood further over his head.

"Okay," Silas said, because he couldn't say anything else.

xxx

Sheridan found himself waking up an hour later after Nissa left him on the couch. He hadn't even realized he fell asleep, but felt anxious. Wherever she had run off to, she was probably there this whole time, because he thought he was on-edge enough to be woken up by even a mouse.

There was no mouse, but there was a girl. It wasn't Nissa.


	10. Chapter IX - The Light

**(A/N: I've been waiting for this chapter! Poor, personality-less Dylan will finally be getting some love here, if all goes as planned. I also consider this song his (yes, I choose a specific song for each character.) We're also introducing a new character! Yes, a lot of OCs, but to be fair, you sort of HAVE to have a lot of OCs in a fanfiction with limited series characters. I hope you guys like this chapter!)**

 **CHAPTER IX**

 **THE LIGHT**

 _There's no way tonight as far as I know  
That heaven will take me, so I'm staggering home.  
Show me the way, oh, show me the light.  
Yeah, I'm drunk, but I'm ready to kick some ass tonight._

Gang of Youths, "Magnolia"

Sheridan recognized this girl, too, but less vividly than he had recognized Silas.

It was only her face that made sense to him. She had narrow eyes, so dark brown that they were black, like holes amidst an angular face—the kind of face you would see on a model, plain and unassuming without makeup but with the potential to be striking, demure, or anything in between. Her skin was a pale brown, and she was a bit tall for a girl—about his height, if not ever-so-slightly taller. With a rather thin build, her muscle was defined enough to show that she certainly was athletic in her spare time.

It was the girl's hair that threw him off. Her hair reached just above her shoulder blades, and was of a silvery color with a gentle wave to it. It was too grey for someone so young; certainly, she was around the same age as he was, which had to be younger than twenty. Maybe she had some sort of genetic disorder?

"Do I know you?" she asked, eyes wide and confused, leaving her mouth hanging slightly ajar.

Sheridan shook his head. "No. Maybe. Who are you?" he asked.

She said, "Nissa calls me Mariko."

As if summoned by her name, Nissa appeared in the living room. Perhaps Sheridan wasn't as great of a sleeper as he thought. It's not like he knew a lot about himself, to begin with. "It's just a name I like," Nissa explained, and then waited a beat. "I found her around the same place I found you. I think she may have come from whatever world you came from."

Sheridan nodded. That would explain why she looked so familiar. "Is she a Nobody, too?"

"Yes," she answered, and Sheridan sighed. He didn't mean to make it seem like he was talking about her when she was right there in the room, but didn't feel comfortable talking to a stranger quite yet. Luckily, Nissa picked back up.

"She doesn't remember anything, either. I'm not sure if she can fight—she doesn't seem to have any sort of weapon, nor can she summon a Keyblade."

She found all this out in the time he was napping? How long had he been napping?

"So we'll have to find something for her. She's eager to learn to fight. I figured we could start training tomorrow, the two of you." She paused, her eyes scanning over the two of them. "Mariko will also be staying here with me until she can restore her heart and helping me find Araceli in exchange."

Sheridan forced himself to smile, still feeling bad about startling Nissa earlier. "So we're in the same situation."

Mariko looked at him for just long enough to be uncomfortable before she nodded twice, slowly.

"Sleep well," she told them, which made Sheridan wonder just how late at night it was. After his hour-long nap, and with the introduction of this new girl into Villain's Vale, he wasn't sure he was ready to retire for the night.

"Sheridan," said Nissa, turning around on her way up the stairs and back to her room. There was something very discomforting in her face, but she tried to smile through it. "Sorry about earlier," she said.

Sheridan shook his head. "I'm sorry," he said, but he wasn't sure what he was sorry for.

This Mariko girl, with one final glance over to Sheridan, followed Nissa up the stairs, presumably so she could show her to her new quarters. Sheridan folded his legs under him as he sat on the couch, and his eyes scanned every last detail of the wall while he tried to ignore the hundreds of thoughts swimming around in his mind.

 _How has it been only a day and a half since I woke up?_

 _What exactly did Araceli do?_

 _Who is this Mariko? Were we close? Why is she so weird?_

 _Why was Nissa so startled by my new name?_

It was almost too much to consider, he thought, letting his legs (which had almost as much of a mind of their own at this point as his keyblade) take him back up the stairs and into his dark, quiet, empty room with the single mirror against the single dresser across from the empty bed with the ruffled, white covers. Sheridan pulled a book from the small bookshelf out at random and flipped through it, not really reading.

xxx

"Recognize this place?" Araceli asked to Dylan as the Gummi Ship slowly touched down on yellowish sand in a vast expanse before a large, columned building. It was guarded by two giant, golden soldiers, crossing their swords over its entrance, and the rest of the yard was closed in by monstrously tall, similarly sandy-colored walls

Dylan blinked a couple of times, staring out the window, and then a toothy smile spread across his face. He had a very honest smile—the kind that hid none of his enthusiasm. It somehow suited him perfectly. "Good doggie," he said.

"Huh?" Silas asked, scratching just behind his own ear and thinking back to Nico's dog, Bailey, a rather stupid and frightened (but cute as all get-out) tiny Maltese who always seemed to have black marks in the white fluff beneath her eyes.

"Nothing," Araceli said.

"Inside joke," expanded Dylan as he stood from his seat and Araceli powered-down the Gummi Ship. Silas supposed the two must have been traveling together for a long time; he expected to feel a little bit left out at times, but it still felt bad. He just never _got_ that feeling back home. His town was small, and almost everyone loved him and had special experiences with him.

His stomach lurched. This must have been how Nico felt every time he dragged him to a party. He'd have to remind himself to apologize later.

"Where are we?" asked Silas.

"Olympus Coliseum," answered Araceli. "It's a rather small world on the surface, but there's another world hidden deep in its bowels called the Underworld, which essentially acts as a hell for Olympus Coliseum, and many other worlds."

"Hell?" asked Silas. "We're going to hell?"

Araceli only nodded, leading her two companions out of the Gummi Ship.

"And we're going to hell _why_?"

"The keyhole is unlocked here," Araceli informed him, "and until we can solve this mystery of Sheridan and Yen Sid, he would want us to figure out why the worlds are unlocked and restore them to their former states. We don't need to be the sole reason to send dozens of worlds into the graveyard now that we have a Keyblade wielder in our ranks."

"Right, we'll just be digging our own," Silas mumbled.

"It's not that bad!" Dylan said, slapping Silas's back with an open palm. "And you can handle it. You're learning fast."

He knew the other boy was only saying that to boost his confidence; he was barely able to hold his own in battle at Disney Castle. In fact, he reminded himself for only the fourth time that day, if he had been stronger, he might have been able to prevent King Mickey's injuries. Silas couldn't believe Queen Minnie allowed him to sleep at her castle and eat her food after letting her husband fall into a coma like that.

"It's important that we get to this world first," Araceli said. "I don't want to think about the consequences of letting hell itself fall to the darkness."

"It hasn't already?" asked Silas, but nobody answered him as they emerged out onto the sand. It was quite warm on this world, which was a welcome change to the more temperate environment of Yen Sid's castle and Disney Castle; his own world was always warm, muggy, and swampy, and that was exactly how he liked it. Silas was fairly certain the only jacket he owned, a thin gray windbreaker, was hiding somewhere in the back of his closet, fitting two sizes too small and riddled with moth balls.

"No one's around," Dylan said. "Where's Hercules?"

"Probably training," Araceli mused. "We'll be fine without him."

"Celi," Dylan warned, elbowing the girl, "you always think we'll be fine, and then we end up needing help in the end."

"No, _you_ end up needing help in the end," said Araceli, flashing one of her rare smiles. "I'm fine."

"Well… stop leaving me alone!"

Araceli allowed herself to laugh. "Try and keep up this time." She glanced around her surroundings, and Silas allowed himself to get a better look, as well. Each corner of the area was marked with a goblet of roaring fire, and opposite the columned building was a wall covered in what looked like scores—from the Coliseum games, no doubt—surrounding an entrance. The entrance didn't seem to lead to a door, but rather a portal, similar yet different from the one which Sheridan used to appear to them at Disney Castle. It seemed to be swirling black and purple, but less like the storm back home and more like pooling smoke, wandering and swirling behind the opening.

"That's the Underworld entrance," Araceli said. "Dylan and I came here many months ago to bargain with Hades. He's the ruler of that world."

Silas nearly choked on his spit. "What did you do? Ask him to release someone from _hell_?"

"Something like that," Araceli said. "Though we didn't do much asking. Hades isn't a man—a god—you bargain with."

He almost didn't want to know anymore, and instead, with a heavy sense of dread weighing down the front of his head, followed Araceli and Dylan into the entrance to the Underworld. After a moment of walking in scentless, untouchable mist, his vision blackened by purple, they arrived in what looked like a cavern, decidedly darker than the warm, sunny Olympus Coliseum… and colder.

Araceli and Dylan didn't seem fazed, but Silas immediately began rubbing his bare arms with his hands in the naïve hope of creating enough friction to warm him. He wanted to turn back immediately and make this Hercules person take his place. He could even have the Keyblade, if he wanted it.

Everything was blue or gray, and ultimately depressing. Silas felt as though some life had been sucked out of him simply by stepping into the place.

"I don't know where the keyhole is," Araceli admitted, "but I believe it's deeper in the Underworld."

"What makes ya think that?" asked Dylan.

"The heart of a world is rarely on the outskirts. It's usually hidden deep within. We have to move forward."

As if hearing her words and choosing to make their lives more difficult, Heartless promptly erupted from the blue ground itself. A few, Silas recognized: there were three or four Shadows in the mix. The rest, he had never seen before. There were at least ten blue and black bats with red hooks dangling from a chain beneath them, beady little yellow eyes, and that unmistakable red-crossed heart symbol on their chests. The four remaining were dogs. They looked much more insane than Bailey, if that was at all possible, with a purplish hue to them, big, similarly purple teeth, a pointed pink tongue hanging out lazily from their mouths, antennae just like the Shadows, and a big, spiked red collar.

None of these Heartless _looked_ dangerous, but Silas knew better by now.

His Keyblade, as always, sensed the threat before he did, and appeared in his hand, the weathervane atop the key's teeth spinning rapidly.

xxx

Not six pages into the heavy hardcover book he wasn't even really reading in the first place, Sheridan heard shuffling just behind his head. _Must be coming from the other room,_ he thought, since his back was right to the wall as he leaned against his black headboard, "reading" atop his empty white bed, which felt normal.

Nissa's room was nowhere near his, he thought, closing the book with his thumb keeping his place (a habit, he thought, he must have picked up from back when he had a heart). That left either Mariko, or an intruder. He assumed it had to be the former, as Nissa explained that Villain's Vale had been abandoned for longer than she could remember.

It sounded like she was pacing back and forth. The footsteps didn't stop. It didn't particularly bother Sheridan, but he took it as a sign that Mariko was just as restless as himself. She should be more, he thought; in mere hours, she had been scooped up by Nissa, named, and given a mission. He supposed his timeline wasn't much longer than her own.

Sheridan thought about it for a full minute, his knuckles just an inch from the wall behind him. With a deep breath, he rapped three times, gently, so she didn't think he was trying to get her to quiet down.

There was a pause, as if Mariko wasn't sure whether she imagined the sound. "Hello?" she asked.

"Mariko," said Sheridan, who then paused to chew his lower lip. "I know you, too."

Her pacing returned, but only for a moment, growing closer and slightly louder. Mariko had walked over to the wall. "How?" she asked in a slightly more clear voice, but one which he still had to listen hard for.

Sheridan shook his head, and, realizing she couldn't possibly see it, he answered, "I don't know. Our Somebodies must have known each other back home."

"Back at Cherished Acres?" she asked.

Sheridan opened his mouth to speak, closed it again, and then said, "That's not what we called it."

"No," she agreed. "We called it 'town.' They call it Cherished Acres."

 _Town_. She was right. They did call it _town_. His home, farmhouses older than time itself with miles between them, separated by forests, large, country roads, and peppered sparsely with comforting suburban conveniences, like grocery stores, parks, and car lots, only with the occasional stray sheep wandering into their boundaries.

That was home. He felt it in his bones, in his heart—or the place his heart once was. Wasn't Mariko a Nobody, too? How did she remember so much more than him? Or, maybe, they only remembered different things.

"Who is _they_?" he asked.

"Nissa and… I assume everyone else," said Mariko, but her voice sounded noncommittal. He heard a bit of a scraping noise travel down the wall beside his bed. Sheridan assumed she slid to sit down against the wall.

Nissa had claimed to not know where he came from. Sheridan assumed that Mariko described the world to her, and she was able to recall it by name. He thought of the picture he found of Nissa and her boyfriend at a beach; she must have been fairly well-traveled. Maybe she visited Cherished Acres herself once.

"Why do they call it Cherished Acres?" asked Sheridan.

"Nissa said it was because the world was never in any danger. Never before had it stood in the way of darkness. She seemed surprised when I told her about the town." Sheridan could almost hear a deep breath from Mariko. "I remember a storm, Sheridan."

What happened, Sheridan couldn't explain. Something rolled around in his chest and stomach. It couldn't have been a heart, he knew better than that—but he'd never felt anything like this before. What was it? Admiration? No, he felt that for Nissa. Wonder? It was possible. How could he know the names for these feelings but not what they _felt_ like? Perhaps understanding was the first step to restoring his heart. He tried to remain open-minded.

"A storm back home. But not much else."

Sheridan said, "It's more than me."

For the rest of the night, they said nothing else, but Sheridan was sure Mariko hadn't moved from the spot in which she sat on the ground, against the wall, until he had finally fallen fast asleep in the early hours of the morning.

xxx

Maybe Dylan was right, Silas thought as his Keyblade disappeared from his hands. He seemed to handle these new Heartless—which Araceli called Hook Bats and Rabid Dogs—without breaking much of a sweat. While he was still in awe with what great ease Araceli could fling away the Heartless with her superior magic skills, as well as with what fearlessness Dylan charged into battle, he was starting to understand how it all was possible, to begin with.

They traveled forth a bit into the blue caverns of the Underworld, fighting away various Heartless as they appeared in their path, before coming to a fork in the road. To the very western end of the opening was a dark, cramped entrance, and to the north was a more spacious, almost purposeful-looking opening which seemed to lead to lightness.

Araceli told them that, initially, the keyhole to the Underworld was hidden in a coliseum, but it was since torn down and the heart of the world was relocated. Silas had no idea how she knew these things, or how it was even _possible_ to move the heart of the world, but he supposed if it was run by a god, he probably had the power to change whatever he wanted, so Silas asked no questions.

"We've never been to this end of the Underworld," Araceli explained. "We should split up."

Dylan moped, " _This_ is why I always need someone's help!"

"You're a more efficient soldier than you're giving yourself credit for, Dylan," said Araceli, and then paused. "But Silas, you should go with Dylan for protection. I can handle myself."

The words stung a little bit, especially after what Silas truly thought was a meaningful conversation with her in the Gummi Ship, but he understood. Maybe he was strong enough to handle Hook Bats and Rabid Dogs, but who knew what else lurked in the depths of the Underworld? He hadn't seen a single dead person yet. They had to be _somewhere_.

"I'll take that path," said Araceli, motioning with her staff toward the lighter, wider opening in the north. "I'm willing to bet that leads to some sort of common area down here. It's too intentional. The keyhole wouldn't be there. You two take the other entrance."

Silas had almost hoped it would be the other way around (could the two of them even _fit_ in there?), but Araceli's words made sense. He didn't want to be the little coward who kept complaining, so he nodded with resolve. "We'll meet back here after we've explored up ahead," he said.

"That's a good idea." She paused. "We'll meet back here in two hours. If I don't see you both then, I'm coming after you."

"Hey, what about if you don't show up?"

"That won't happen," said Araceli, and with that, and not another word, she headed toward her entrance.

Dylan and Silas gave each other equal looks of apology for the squeeze they would have to make to get through this cavern, and headed forth. Silas let Dylan lead, as there was no way two people could fit side-by-side in that opening.

After less than thirty seconds in the cramped corridor, neither of them could see much of anything. "Fire," he heard Dylan say and, for a moment, Silas feared they had been caught in some sort of blaze. However, he only held his gun upward, the barrels facing the ceiling, and a small flame, like a torch or a lighter, hovered above it, illuminating their path.

"Smart," said Silas. The cavern walls were all deep blues and grays, and they looked wet. He could swear he saw some Hook Bats sleeping upside-down from the ceiling, so he made a mental note to keep quiet. It would be impossible to use his Keyblade in this space; Silas was unconvinced it was even wide enough for his Keyblade to fit horizontally.

"Nico would hate it in here," he said conversationally, after three more minutes passed in the corridor without another sound. "He's claustrophobic as fuck."

Dylan chuckled. "I love small spaces," he said. "They feel safe."

"I hope there's enough air back there," Silas said, thinking of those shows he watched where spelunkers died of asphyxiation by journeying too deeply into a cave.

"We've got magic for that," Dylan assured him, but he didn't sound sure.

Following more silence, Silas felt obligated to keep the conversation going. "Does Araceli usually split up from you?"

Dylan nodded. "Yeah. She trusts me." He paused, as if wondering whether that were truly the case. "But we always find our way back to each other. Once, we split up for a whole week in Atlantica—it's this underwater world. Met up again in some underwater cave full of shit from the land, like statues and forks. It was weird."

Silas managed a laugh. "You guys seem close."

"We are," Dylan agreed. "She's like the sister I never had."

After putting his hands behind his head, Silas said, "You don't have any sisters?"

"Dunno." Dylan paused. "I had a foster family until I was about twelve, had a couple of brothers and sisters there. But we weren't close, and we weren't related."

Until he was twelve? Silas knew Dylan was homeless and orphaned from his conversation not an hour ago with Araceli, but he didn't realize it had been since he was a kid. "I have a sister," he said, trying not to make Dylan feel uncomfortable. "Her name's Sylvia."

"Sounds hot," said Dylan.

Silas scowled. "She's married," he said, but chose to avoid the words _and probably dead_.

"Hey, chill, 's just a joke," said Dylan. "I just like making people feel uncomfortable. I actually don't hit on a lot of people."

Silas believed that. He was a bit too much of a goofball for that; he knew the type. He was the type, back when he was much smaller, back before Nico.

"What's Sylvia like?" he asked.

"She's okay," he answered. "Like eight years older than me, so she used to help with me a lot when my parents split up. Kind of a goody two-shoes, but really considerate. She, like, always stops by the house—she doesn't even live there anymore—to check up on us and bring take-out. Her husband's a lot like her, but quiet, and really shy. His name's Jake."

"She'll be okay," Dylan assured him, as if reading his thoughts. "People with that much light in their hearts can't be snuffed out by the darkness."

"I hope you're right," said Silas.

"I'm living proof," Dylan assured him.

"You've got a lot of light in you?" Silas asked, unconsciously bringing his fingers up to the left side of his chest. He pulled them back down before they could touch the cotton of his shirt.

"Araceli says, to a fault." He paused. "Hey, if I tell you something, you won't laugh?"

Dylan said it like a question, but Silas was surprised he didn't phrase it that way, "Yeah," said Silas. "I'm a good confidante." Nico taught him that word. In fact, he had told him himself that he was a _good confidante_ , so it had to be true.

"A couple of weeks before I met Araceli—hitched a ride on her Gummi Ship, and she found me—I was fending myself off from some Heartless and wondered, well, how bad could it be? I'd been fighting alone for years. I didn't know how much longer I could do it. So I just put my gun down and stood there. Waited for a Neoshadow to take my heart."

That must have been another kind of Heartless. Dylan didn't say anything for a moment. Silas tried to speak, but had no words.

"I can tell the future, you know," he said, looking back at Silas with a giant grin on his face. "Sometimes. Probably not really. But I get these really strong feelings, sometimes, that have a history of being right. I had a feeling there, watching that Neoshadow barreling towards me. I felt like things were going to change. Maybe it was just survival instincts; maybe my mind forced itself to think that to keep me alive. Sometimes I don't trust my feelings.

But I chose to trust it. I picked up my gun and killed the Neoshadow. Found an abandoned house and crashed there for a few days. I had a feeling my future wasn't at that world, so I found a parked Gummi Ship, picked the lock, and hid inside. Something I'd done a lot before. That's when I met Araceli. I think she might have been the change I knew was coming."

Silas shook his head. Dylan just admitted to him that he nearly committed suicide, whether or not he chose to see it that way. "Dylan," he said, "why the fuck would I laugh at that?"

So, instead, Dylan laughed. "You're a really good guy, Silas."

There it was: the light. The cavern steeply expanded to a breathable width as they emerged in another clearing, with the sun from above shining down on them. Could they truly be beneath a hole from the earth into the underworld? Silas could only see a blue sky above him and, before him, a giant keyhole carved into the rock, blue veins of agate surrounding the shape like ivy.

"There it is," said Dylan. "Hades moved it after he shut down the Coliseum. Araceli told me she came here once before when the Coliseum was still up and running. Apparently it was full of a lot of really difficult fighting challenges."

"I'll bet," Silas mumbled. His Keyblade appeared in his hand, and, without hesitation, he lifted it and pointed it toward the keyhole. Like in Disney Castle, with a small beam of light and a click, the keyhole disappeared. He sighed in relief at not having to deal with any more Hook Bats hanging from the ceilings.

"Better get back," said Dylan. "Araceli's probably already there waiting for us."

So the two of them started another long, half-hour trek through the narrow pathway. Again, Dylan led them, and Silas glanced back at the light at least every minute until it was so far away it was just a pinprick. They didn't speak much at all on the trip back, and finally, what felt like hours later, the two of them arrived at the fork in the Underworld where they had left Araceli, but she wasn't there.

Silas could sense the tension in Dylan's voice when he said, looking at his watch, "Well, she's still got thirty minutes."

Thirty minutes came and went.


	11. Chapter X - Summer Memory

**(A/N: I know, I'm the worst. I take forever to put up the next chapter, and when I do, it's short as hell. I'm hitting a little bit of a writer's block, but I'm going to try and work through it. I want to get as much done of this fanfiction as possible before November, where I'll be taking a month-long hiatus for NaNoWriMo. So hopefully we can get 1-2 new chapters up by then! I'll be sure to leave with an excellent cliffhanger for us to pick up in December. Anyway, hope you enjoy!)**

 **CHAPTER X**

 **SUMMER MEMORY**

 _It didn't matter what they wanted to see.  
He thought he saw someone that looked just like me.  
A summer memory that just never dies,  
We worked too long and hard to give it no time._

Daft Punk feat. Julian Casablancas, "Instant Crush"  
 _Random Access Memories_

As sweet as Nissa had been to Sheridan, she was ruthless in the destroyed yard of Villain's Vale, occupied only by enormous, broken-off bits of castle wall, the two of them, and the newest resident of the Vale, Mariko. He wasn't convinced the day was even half-over when he collapsed on the dusty rock for a five-minute break, his white hair sticking to his forehead with thick sweat.

Mariko didn't look any worse for the wear, but at least she could throw her gray hair up into a stubby ponytail, where Sheridan's hair wasn't quite long enough yet for hairbands. She sat down next to him with care, her thin legs trembling as she slowly lowered herself to the flat of the boulder. "Regret offering to help Nissa yet?" he asked her between breaths.

He was kidding, but Mariko answered him seriously, "It's worth it to be a Somebody again."

Sheridan cocked his head to the left. Nissa must have promised Mariko she would help her restore her heart, too. How many hearts had she promised? Where did she plan on finding these missing hearts?

Mariko looked down at the longbow resting across her lap which Nissa had gotten for her. She thought she must have taken archery classes at some point in her life, because she picked up the motions wickedly fast. It was a mesmerizing weapon despite its less intimidating appearance compared to Tramontane. The weapon was as tall as Mariko was, with a glimmering, silvery tightly-drawn string connecting the legs of the deep black bow. On first glance, it was only black, but when stared at closely, one could see powdery, floating masses of color peppered with glittery white spots, like the stars in deep space.

"Araceli was strong," said Sheridan, mostly just to break the silence, "but you mastered that bow so quickly, you won't have a problem."

"Thanks," Mariko said, though Sheridan could hardly tell if she was smiling. With her right hand, she hiked the silver strap of her quiver higher up her shoulder. In the black container, the arrows, with jewel-colored shafts of jade, ruby, and amethyst, bounced from the movement. Sheridan could see the silver-feathered fletchings at the end, but not the similarly-colored, lethally-pointed arrowheads which clunked at the bottom of the quiver.

Nissa had encouraged Mariko to save those arrows for times of desperation and to, instead, form arrows from magic—lightning arrows, fire arrows, ice arrows. Mariko had managed to form a fire arrow after an hour of concentration, but it disappeared when she jumped at not having felt any sort of heat on her hands.

It was more than Sheridan could do. He found he couldn't summon magic at all in the presence of these women. He wondered if their attendance made him nervous (they _were_ both beautiful women), or if he had to be in some sort of danger to perform best.

Nissa summoned them back up. Sheridan could hardly believe he had been sitting for a full five minutes—the sweat on his brow hadn't even dried—but he wasn't about to complain. He didn't know how she planned to do it, but he trusted Nissa to restore them to their previous selves.

Then, he thought, gazing over at Mariko, with her gray hair like a loose, wavy curtain over her left eye, her tanned skin slathered in a layer of sweat, and her short, white kimono and its charcoal-flowered sash, he could understand his connection with Mariko and maybe— _maybe_ —nothing else would really matter.

xxx

Silas was about to open his mouth and suggest the two of them go in after Araceli before a thunderous roar of crashes, impossibly heavy, shook the open cavern, sending bats—regular bats, as all the Heartless had disappeared from the world with the sealing of the keyhole—and loose pebbles dropping from the ceiling.

He glanced over at Dylan, whose sea green eyes widened to perfect circles, his hand, ruffling through his auburn hair, stopped in its tracks. The other boy didn't have to speak for Silas to guess what he was going to say next. "Araceli."

They both turned on their heels toward the entrance to the cavern where Araceli disappeared, but before they could approach the opening, Araceli, in a blurry, gray mass, darted out, death-gripping her staff, screaming, "Clear!"

Silas wasn't quite sure what she meant, but followed Dylan's lead and backed out, giving her space. Not five seconds after her command, the edges of the cavern entrance burst open, and gray-purple boulders, gravel, and stone exploded in every direction. One such rock smacked Silas in the cheek, but he managed to deflect the subsequent offenders by covering his face with his arms. His legs, wrists, and chest already felt bruised up pretty badly.

It was nothing compared to Araceli, who seemed to sport at least one cut, scrape, or bruise in every square inch of her body. Her short, dark brown hair was in disarray atop her head, and her dress, still slightly blood-stained from Yen Sid's message, was frayed at the edges of her bell-shaped sleeves.

Silas could hardly believe what had followed her here, but didn't have the time or energy to question his sanity after the last couple of days he'd had: it was a giant, black, three-headed dog, each head with pointed teeth as long as his arm and glowing, red eyes.

"Good doggie," Dylan muttered beside him.

"Didn't find it," Araceli said, out of breath, her eyes flickering to every corner of the opening, as if trying to decide their next step.

"We did," Dylan told her. "It's sealed."

"Then we have to go." Araceli grabbed Dylan's wrist, clearly expecting Silas to follow, and they headed toward the opening through which they had arrived at the fork in the cave.

Silas was about to argue that they should fight this thing, until he saw how injured Araceli was and realized he would have to be about twice as competent as he was in order to pick up the slack and fill the hole that Araceli's skills left. Instead, he decided, she was right: they had to run.

All three heads of the giant dog snapped in their direction as their legs carried them through the Underworld as absolutely quickly as they possibly could. The creature's barking and roaring caused the hell around them to tremble and groan like a waking giant. At one point, its paw nearly grazed the back of Silas's leg, and he thought for sure that he would be torn apart and Araceli and Dylan would leave his body there to rot in that place.

It was so much longer, thought Silas as the minutes ticked by and his muscles burned beneath his skin, leaving the Underworld, than it had been as they explored deep within. Were they running in circles? Had they really ventured so deep into this place?

Finally they reached the entrance to the Coliseum, through which the three-headed dog refused to follow them through. Silas was dripping wet with perspiration, which the hot, hot sun from above ground only exacerbated. Dylan collapsed on the sand, his back rising and falling with his quick breath, and Silas couldn't help but follow in his footsteps, his jelly legs folding beneath him.

"Curaga," Araceli muttered, raising her staff the small bit she could be bothered to lift it from the ground, and the familiar, healing plant of the spell began stitching and patching them up in cool relief. Silas hadn't realized the fracture on his cheekbone was so painful until the pain was finally gone. Araceli was once again unmarked by solo journey through the Underworld.

"What the fuck did you do," Dylan asked as soon as he had the energy, "to piss of Cerberus?"

"Existed in his space," Araceli muttered. She shook her head, performing some other kind of bizarre magic on her dress. Before Silas's eyes, it cleaned itself up, and the seams stitched themselves together. This magic nonsense really was fascinating, but he never expected himself to get as good at it as Araceli was.

"No Sheridan," said Silas.

She shook her head. "We'll have to just keep going as we're going," she said, "sealing keyholes and hoping we run into him, or find the wizard."

"Any chance we could relax first?" Silas asked.

He didn't expect Araceli to take his suggestion seriously, but she said, "We can rest on the Gummi Ship on the way to the next closest world. Then we can find somewhere to eat and recuperate."

Silas glanced back over at Dylan, who moped silently as he pushed his face off of the sand, wiped it away from where it stuck to his sweat, and hiked his gun up over his shoulder. The two of them followed Araceli back to where she parked the Gummi Ship at the periphery of the coliseum entrance, where it seemed to be undisturbed.

xxx

"You're in such deep trouble," said Nico, shaking his head. The metal at the bottom of the cargo bed was hard and uncomfortable beneath him, but Silas had already stolen the blanket he stashed away in there to rest on. Nico didn't want to touch it, anyway; he already had a pretty good idea of where that blanket has been.

"Jason got lucky I'm in such a good mood today," said Silas in a mumble, holding his nemesis's black spray paint can in his hand and holding it above his head, twisting and turning it in each direction so the park's lamppost light gleamed off of the silver edges. "I should've sent him to the hospital for tagging my car."

"That seems like an extreme reaction," said Nico. It was harder to see the stars above them here with how well-lit the park was. "How's your hand?"

Silas uncurled and curled his fingers, holding them up beside the spray paint can. Gashing red marks dotted each of his knuckles from the impact with Jason's jaw. "Fine," he said, squinting slightly. Nico knew he was lying—his friend wouldn't _admit_ to being in pain, even though Nico knew he had never been in a real fight in his life before.

"We should get some paint tomorrow," he suggested.

"Why?"

"To paint over the tag," Nico said, eyebrows furrowing, thinking it was pretty obvious. After all, Jason and his friends had spray painted a rather ugly black lightning bolt across one side, as well as some nonsense words (half of which were illegible) on the other side, and Silas was always so insistent that his first car be pure, cherry red.

"Nah, I'm going to keep it," he said, giving a small nod, and pushing himself up to a sitting position, leaning back on his hands. "Don't want them to think I care enough to get it fixed."

Nico just about stammered, pushing some of his dark hair out of his face. "But it's so… it's so ugly."

Silas burst out in laughter. "She's beautiful no matter what. Spray paint can't fuck up _true_ beauty." He continued laughing as Nico pushed his right arm, nearly causing him to fall back down upon his gross sex blanket.

"I'm just saying my uncle can probably get you a discount on paint."

But Silas shook his head. "If anything, this tag was a gift. When was the last time you got a free can of spray paint?" he asked, tossing the can between his left and right hands for a minute. Suddenly, he pointed it directly at Nico where he laid. "Put 'em up, or I'll shoot," he threatened.

Nico scoffed as Silas rearranged himself so he hovered atop his friend, spray paint pointed directly at his heart. "Don't test me, Nicodemus!" he boomed. "I am above the law! I'm the one with the spray paint!"

"Shut up," he said, unable to contain his laughter anymore.

"Die, vandal!" he screamed, and sprayed Nico right in the chest. He couldn't even be mad that his last clean shirt was now blackened in the chest. The fumes dizzied him and only made him laugh even harder.

Nico found, as his laughter died, and Silas's continued, that he could see the small glimmer of tears in the corner of his eyes where he squeezed them shut to keep out the black paint. His lips were curled in a huge grin around perfectly straight, white teeth that had never had to see the gnarly, metallic pull of braces, like his own. His golden, dirty-blond hair, usually immaculate and in-place, was an untidy mess framing his oval-shaped face.

He could smell Silas from here—that spicy, warm-smelling cologne he had been wearing since high school began, with faint undertones of stale weed still clinging to the cotton fibers of his shirt. Nico thought maybe he could also get a hint of his shampoo from here, the coconut one his sister left behind and Silas used whenever he ran out of his own.

In that moment, drowning in the smell of the spray paint and the smell of Silas, and the hard metal digging against his spine, Nico forgot about painting over his best friend's car, forgot about the time his mom was expecting him home, and forgot about what kind of trouble they could be in when Jason told his parents what happened out there at the park. He thought maybe nothing else really mattered.

Nico felt his heart pumping. Without thinking, he pushed upwards against Silas's chest, urging him away.

"Dude, what's wrong?" asked Silas, his laughter fading slowly.

"Gotta get home," was all he could say as he hopped out of the cargo bed and made his way into the passenger's seat. The drive home was quiet.

xxx

"Morning, sunshine," Araceli said, sporting an unusual grin, before Silas could even fully interpret her words. "You pulled a Dylan."

Of course, in the seat in front of him, Dylan was dead asleep, snoring faintly. "Long day," Silas said as a sort of lame excuse, feeling almost embarrassed for having judged Dylan so much for falling asleep during the Gummi Ship rides only to do the same.

To be fair, it _had_ been a long day.

"It's fine," said Araceli. "We're almost there."

"Where are we going?" Silas asked.

"A place called Halloween Town," Araceli told him. "It was one of the first worlds I visited after leaving my home world, so I know it pretty well. We should be able to get to the keyhole pretty quickly, and then rest."

 _Rest_. Even after sleeping for who-knows-how-long, Silas liked the sound of that. He could also really go for more of Queen Minnie's food, but wasn't about to suggest they go all the way back to Disney Castle (though he did wonder how King Mickey was doing).

"Hey Araceli," he began, "do you dream a lot?"

Araceli, with her right hand, felt at the pocket on her dress. She pursed her lips together. "Sometimes," Araceli finally answered. "Usually, no. Why?"

"Do you ever mix up something you dreamed with what's real?" he asked, thinking back to the summer memory he was almost positive really happened… but wasn't sure. It was as if he was watching from another perspective. He thought for a moment he was there as Nico, but that couldn't be true, could it?

Of course it couldn't be true. Did that night even happen? It wasn't more than a couple of years ago. He was still groggy, he decided. It was too soon after waking up.

"Sometimes," she said, which made him feel better. "Usually if I can take a couple of minutes to contemplate it, I'll find that I can better sort out my dreams from my memories."

Silas almost expected it. Araceli reached down beneath her chair and pulled out a small, silver flask. She took a pull from it, and scooted it back beneath her chair, keeping her eyes on the road as if nothing had even happened. He thought maybe the dull roar of the engine and Dylan's rhythmic snoring would lull him back to sleep, until the Gummi Ship slowed and they began to touch down on Halloween Town.

xxx

Sheridan barely had half a good night's sleep before Nissa had emerged, knocking on both his and Mariko's door in the dead of night. He'd rolled out of his bed, in which he'd fallen asleep to the gentle hum of Mariko's breathing on the other side, and ran his hands over his face. He glanced at the clock beside his bed, situated atop the book he had, once again, pretended to read before drifting off to sleep. It was just past one in the morning.

When had he fallen asleep? Ten? Eleven? It wasn't nearly enough time.

By the time Sheridan emerged in the hallway, Mariko was already dressed up, back in her kimono, and rubbing her eyes in a similar, desperate attempt to stay awake as Sheridan had.

"I went into town," said Nissa, holding up some sort of small device that reminded Sheridan of a USB stick, "and found this. On it is a program that works as a Gummi Ship radar; there aren't a lot of ships out there these days, so if we could pinpoint which ship is Araceli's, we could find her whenever we need." She paused. "We just need a computer."

"Do you ever sleep?" asked Sheridan, finding that his filter wasn't fully-functioning this early in the morning.

Nissa was smiling, dangling the stick from a small rope on her right hand. "Nope," she said. "I bought it off of someone who said the technology was out-of-date, but I think it'll work just fine, especially if we can find some updates for it."

Mariko said, "Where can we find a computer?" Sheridan couldn't help but admire her work ethic when, by anyone's standards, after such a long day of training, the two of them should have at least been given a full eight hours to sleep.

The blond woman tapped her small chin with the first two fingers of her right hand. "I only know of one," she said, "and it's not far."


	12. Chapter XI - Fall

**(A/N: I like this chapter! It's the first one I've liked in a while. As always, be sure to listen to the song/the whole album as you read! TDCC actually came out with this album really recently, and I like it a lot. It's not as poignant/fitting for the characters it represents as** _ **How Do You Feel Now?**_ **was, but it's still good.**

 **Hope y'all like this chapter!)**

 **CHAPTER XI**

 **FALL**

 _Think I already know it's out of my control.  
Found no solution but to let the pieces fall where they fall.  
Even with nothing left, I've got more than you.  
I wanna let you in  
And we'll begin._

Two Door Cinema Club, "Good Morning"  
 _Gameshow_

Once again, Silas bit his tongue, promising himself that he would ask Araceli about her pills and liquor someday. Had they not gotten close enough yet? He supposed not. As much as she shared with him during their last long talk in the Gummi Ship, the two really hadn't been acquainted for that long.

How long _had_ it been since they began their journey together? Surely no longer than a week, at this point.

They touched down on another world and, like clockwork, Dylan woke from his slumber. How he managed to sleep so peacefully during every trip and wake up immediately as they reached their destination almost every time was a mystery to Silas. Meanwhile, the smallest little thunderstorm, and he was wide awake.

He tried not to think about the thunderstorm.

"Halloween Town," Araceli announced as soon as she unbuckled herself and began leading the other two out of the Gummi Ship. Dylan offhandedly admitted that he had never actually been to Halloween Town, so Silas assumed it must have been a while since Araceli herself had been there. Would things be very different?

Silas loved the place the moment he set foot on the strange, swirling ground.

He was surrounded by gravestones that were almost cartoonish in appearance: top-heavy, mostly unmarked, and shaded in the same coral and cream colors. Emerging from the spiked, brick wall surrounding the cemetery were snarled, curling wrought-iron fence posts, wrapping around to a hinged gate at the very end.

It was nighttime out—either that, or it was just a very gloomy day, the sky overcast with clouds darker than Silas had ever seen back home.

"What the hell?" asked Dylan, looking down at himself.

Silas had hardly seen his two friends, as he had been so preoccupied with the magnificent creepiness of the world around him, but they had changed, too. Dylan's standard shirt, jacket, jeans, and boots were replaced with an odd-looking pinstripe suit, a deep blue in color and stained with a dark red in patches that Silas could only assume was blood. It looked like he was wearing makeup, with the skeletal pattern of teeth, cheekbones, and black holes for eyes painted atop white skin.

Araceli was equally transformed. Her grey dress was replaced with a black one, longer and certainly harder to move around in, with gothic lace spilling over the edges of her sleeves and hem. A black, pointed hat flattened her short, wavy hair, and even her staff had changed: the beautiful, silvery-white weapon was replaced with your run-of-the-mill broom.

They were a skeleton and a witch. He knew this place was called Halloween Town, but did it have the power to magically give its residents costumes?

"I did this," said Araceli, as if reading their minds. "We'd be rather conspicuous otherwise."

Silas looked down. He wore fuzzy, fingerless gloves with long, black claws protruding from them, the pale brown of the darkest points of his hair. Even his shoes were replaced with similarly clawed boots. His black shirt and jeans remained, but the shirt had a big claw mark gaping open to bare skin, and his jeans had been torn at the knees.

Ears. He felt the top of his head and came in contact with fuzzy ears. He must have been a werewolf of some kind. Silas had no interest in seeing how hideous his face must have looked in this outfit.

"Okay," he said, "so where's the keyhole?"

"It's—" Araceli began, but was interrupted by something white and fast zipping past her face.

All the stopped to stare at the thing, which seemed to come to a screeching halt by a lone gravestone. It was floating, and looked like a dog in the face, but the rest of its body was like a small sheet, and fairly transparent. There was no doubt in Silas's mind that this thing was a ghost—in a place called Halloween Town, it seemed natural.

It was growling in their direction. Silas, with eyebrows high, looked over at Dylan and Araceli, but they caught on before he did, staring backwards: it wasn't the three of them that the dog was growling at. A horde of Heartless had followed it all the way to the cemetery.

Unsurprisingly, these looked nothing like the Shadows and Soldiers and Hook Bats that Silas had gotten himself familiar with. A few were these bizarre, brownish phantoms which seemed to have a single crazy-looking yellow eye still stuck in their heads, with the other dangling lazily from an open socket. Their long, pointed fingers hung down as if from broken wrists, and their mouths were a zig-zag of stitches. They wore torn shirts which bore that familiar Heartless emblem on them.

With a foul screech, a couple of them stared directly forward, a yellow light erupting from their single eye in Silas's direction. It seemed to turn red almost immediately, and the things began violently rotating in the air. The others threw back their heads so that their chained eye popped back into place.

A couple of the Heartless were different. These looked like deathly thin mummies, wrapped mostly in white cloth of some kind with only a single eye showing. Their ribcage was exposed, and sharp-looking discs circled their torsos. Their fingers and toes were long, spiked, and deep gray.

Araceli was smart enough to not hesitate. She lifted her broom (which, despite its shabby appearance, was every bit as capable as her staff), and bolts of lightning rained down from the sky and onto the Heartless.

Silas nearly screamed. He didn't mean to, but he couldn't help it. The lightning came down so quick, and with a thunderous crash. Jumping backwards, he tried to ignore Dylan's stare, and hoped that Araceli didn't notice. With trembling fingers, he grasped the hilt of his Keyblade—which was mostly the same, save for darker colors and a gnarled thorn taking the place of the ribbon—and told himself that he was safe. It was _fine_.

He went after the mummies, still feeling a tinge of uselessness against all of those Bolt Towers back at Disney Castle. He found they moved more slowly than expected, and in such a jerky way that he was able to mostly dodge them and smack them with the Keyblade as soon as they were caught off-guard. Suffering maybe only one hit to his leg, he managed to do away with them.

Maybe he wasn't as useless as he thought.

Dylan and Araceli made quick work of the ghost Heartless, and the dog, timid and looking in each direction, eventually made his way toward the three of them, whining.

"This world is definitely unlocked," Araceli muttered, placing a single hand straight through the dog's head. He didn't seem fazed, but Dylan and Silas couldn't help but laugh, not knowing what they were expecting to happen when she tried to pet a ghost.

"Zero! There you are!"

The voice came from a tall figure creeping toward them from the entrance of the cemetery. Its thin, spindly legs made great strides, and the tail of his black suit jacket floated behind him with each wide step. His skin was pale as all get-out and he was entirely bald; it wasn't until the creature approached that Silas realized he was a skeleton—not like Dylan's costume, but a real, honest-to-God skeleton, with holes for eyes and a nose, and small bones for fingers.

"Thanks for stopping Zero," said the man in a friendly tone, approaching them. The dog—Zero—showed immediate excitement and floated right up to the man. He must have been his owner.

"We didn't," Araceli said, and explained to the man that a bunch of Heartless were following him.

The skeleton man frowned (could skeletons frown?) and said, "I know. They're back. I intended to use them as decorations a while ago, and didn't realize how dangerous they were. There have been complaints left and right."

He smiled again.

"I'm Jack," he said. "Jack Skellington."

The three introduced themselves.

"You know, you remind me a lot of these other visitors we had. Especially you, with that giant key," said Jack, pointing at Silas. He willed his Keyblade to disappear, and it did.

Araceli gave a single nod, as if she didn't need any more explanation. "Here for the same purpose, no doubt," she said. "We have reason to believe End of the World has been restored, or a similar, more powerful world has been created. Halloween Town is not the only world whose keyhole has returned, unsealed."

Jack said, "But I thought we were safe once Sora sealed our keyhole."

Sora?

Araceli responded, "We thought so, too. A world's keyhole should never need to be sealed again after the first time it's sealed. We still don't quite understand." She stood up a little straighter. "But we're here to help seal the keyhole to Halloween Town again."

Jack nodded and said, "Is it in the same place as before?"

Silas looked over at Araceli, who said, "Unless it's been moved by a very powerful force, it's probably where it was those years ago."

He knew she was thinking about the keyhole in the Underworld which had been moved, apparently, by Hades. Perhaps you truly did need to have godlike powers to do something like move the portal to a world's heart.

"That's going to be a problem," Jack told her, trying to wrangle Zero as he barked and circled him like a vulture. "Nobody can reach where Oogie Boogie's castle was."

"Why's that?" asked Araceli, crossing her arms.

"The curly hill won't uncurl."

xxx

Sheridan recognized the building where Nissa led them as the same one which he passed on his first trip through Radiant Garden and over to Villain's Vale. It took some twists and turns without the copper-piped building before they ended up in anything resembling a human's home, and even those rooms looked like they hadn't been touched for the better part of a year.

The old-fashioned, circular room where Nissa led them was veined with pipes like the rest of the building, but behind them were ornately-designed cream-colored walls, bordered with three-shelved bookshelves which were nearly his height. Stray books littered the edges of the floor, as if a rabid dog had rubbed all over them in his attempt to get dry after a bath.

The floor had tiles equally as ornate as the walls, but the beauty of the room was destroyed by its state of cleanliness. Multiple shards of… _something_ were scattered about the ground, and boards displaying scientific models were haphazardly placed upon the various surfaces, save for the table right in the middle, behind which a single, dangerously-pointed chair sat. Multiple cobwebs connected the bookshelves together. The place could use a serious cleaning.

His fists tightened and flexed. He _desperately_ wanted to fix this place up. It made Sheridan uneasy.

A single portrait hung on the wall of a regal-looking man with tanned skin, a slightly pointed ear, and long, gray hair, swept back as if he were standing in the wind, with two stray pieces hanging about his angular face. He wore a white coat of some kind with a kerchief rather than a tie, which made Sheridan think he may be a scientist. Only half his face was visible.

"That's Xehanort," said Nissa as she strode through the room. "This was his study."

"Who is Xehanort?" asked Mariko.

"Was," corrected Nissa, leading them to the wall just beside the large portrait. "Xehanort was an important researcher in the study of the heart, and apprentice to Ansem the Wise. He created most of the Heartless you see today in his experiments and, at one point, even became a Heartless himself. He's gone, now."

How could a person _create_ a Heartless? Sheridan almost didn't want to know. "What happened to him?"

"Drowned in darkness. So it goes," mused Nissa, biting her lower lip. "A very skilled Keyblade wielder defeated him before closing the Door to Darkness some time ago. His Nobody—like you two are—was named Xemnas. Xemnas worked with a troupe of other Nobodies in order to find a way to restore their hearts and make them Somebodies again. He was killed, too."

She turned to them, and smiled.

"But a lot of the members of Organization XIII—his followers—did recover their hearts. So I have high hopes for you two."

Sheridan smiled, if only because he thought he should, over at Mariko. Her eyebrows knitted together, but she nodded.

"The computer's through here," Nissa explained once she realized there were no more questions, and placed one hand against the wall. This time, Mariko looked back at Sheridan, looking equally as puzzled as—if not more than—she had moments before.

For a moment, a tiny patch of the wall glowed beneath her fingers before the entire thing lit up, and the wall disappeared, leading to a long, gray, metallic hallway.

She turned back towards them and said, "I've been here before," as if that answered all their questions.

As though the wall was never there in the first place, she began trekking down the hall, and Sheridan and Mariko dutifully followed.

The hall led quickly to an open balcony with frosted-glass floors and a single metal railing; it looked out upon confusing-looking rooms, out of which hundreds of black cylinders protruded, and between which a sliver of the bright outside world was visible.

They hung a right and came upon a room that was nothing short of a technological marvel. It was no wonder this Xehanort chose to keep the room private; should a thief steal anything, there was no doubt he could hock it for quite a bit. On the leftmost edge of the room was a large computer with both an oversized keyboard and monitor—was Xehanort a giant?—and the other side held dozens of smaller monitors as well as some large, circular device for which Sheridan couldn't begin to guess its purpose.

"Don't touch anything," she warned them gently, the way a mother would with her children on their first trip the museum, as she strode up to the computer. She typed away at the thing (and seemed to know the password right off the bat) before inserting her device into a slot in the side of the monitor, and waited for its installation.

"Hopefully this ancient thing can handle this program," she said. "It was pretty state-of-the-art a few years ago."

They were in luck. The program installed quickly, and Nissa booted it up. Immediately upon opening the program, multiple sections of the universe were displayed as tiny pictures, and a few of them pulsated. She clicked one which did, and an image of space loaded on the screen, with a single red dot blinking at one of the stars. She zoomed in on it.

"Halloween Town," said Nissa. "It's not… too far from here."

"Is that Araceli, definitely?" asked Mariko.

"No, not definitely." Nissa took her hands back and crossed them over her chest. "But it's the closest sector of the universe to Disney Castle, where we saw them last, and it's really unlikely that they got all the way to the other sectors that were blinking."

"Okay, so we go to Halloween Town and intercept them there?" asked Sheridan.

"Maybe," said Nissa, "or we wait until they're on the move."

xxx

The Curly Hill was, indeed, curly. It seemed to erupt from the ground like a limb, the base peppered with more gravestones and the expanse below littered with the dim glow of happy-faced jack-o'-lanterns. They had just rid the area of another mess of Heartless—Search Ghosts, Wight Knights, and a third kind that Araceli called Wizards, which looked exactly how they sounded.

"The ruins of Oogie's castle are just beyond that wall," said Jack, "but the Curly Hill hasn't uncurled in a while. Not that anyone's been trying to get over there."

"How did it usually… uncurl?" asked Silas.

"This stone, right here," Jack Skellington informed him, walking over to a gravestone and tipping it slightly in one direction. Nothing happened.

Dylan walked up to the tall brick wall across from the Curly Hill. "Can't we just climb it?"

He clawed at it for a moment, pacing across the expanse. It seemed there was nothing adequate to grab on to except for the very top, which was just out of even Jack's reach.

"Maybe we could jump from the top of the hill," suggested Silas.

"I don't think you'd make it," Dylan said.

"And even if you did, you'd likely get impaled by the iron spikes on top," said Araceli. Silas frowned; there had to be some other way across the wall. "Hey," said Dylan, "stand on my shoulders, both of you." He hunched down at the wall.

Araceli looked at Silas, and he glanced back at her. "How would you get over?"

"I'll wait here," Dylan said, "with Jack. You need to get over there to lock the keyhole."

"He's right," said Araceli, walking up to Dylan. "We'll be quick."

Silas could tell that the two of them had done this before, because they knew exactly which foot to start with, and Dylan was able to stabilize himself—Silas imagined all of Araceli's muscle was quite heavy, so he was impressed—before standing upward. Araceli gingerly grabbed the edge of the wall, hiked herself up to stand on it, and carefully avoided the metal spikes before hopping down to the other side. With a giant thud, she hit the ground.

He gulped, and tried to imitate exactly the way Araceli had stood on Dylan's shoulders, but they were considerably shakier this time around. The first time he tried to grab the edge of the wall, his hand slipped, but he got a good grip the second time and stood, shakily, on the barrier.

Araceli was small beneath him. The jump didn't seem so high from the ground.

Silas held his breath and jumped, but it felt more like a fall. His ankles stung from the impact, but he managed to land, crouching, without tumbling over. He straightened himself up and tried to look like it wasn't a big deal, but Araceli wasn't even looking; she was already making her way across the short bridge, which seemed to hover over a river of sickly, atomic green.

"It's across here," she told him, and he followed.

What he saw next was nothing like he had expected: a deep, deep crater. If Silas thought the drop down from the brick wall had been deep, this would drop him all the way to the Underworld. Nothing but purplish dirt, rocks, and the remains of a brick fence (with a few stray jack-o'-lanterns) waited for them beneath.

"Down there?" asked Silas. Araceli nodded.

He summoned his Keyblade—it seemed to come to him without much of a problem now—and pointed it down to the very center of the crater.

It was there: the keyhole, bigger than any he had ever seen, stretching over nearly the entire expanse of the pit. But nothing happened. The familiar beam shot out of his keyblade, but it couldn't quite reach the keyhole.

"We probably need to get down there," said Araceli.

Silas glanced around them. There was no ladder down (or back up, for that matter). "How?" he asked.

"I've done this before."

Silas sighed. How was she so well-traveled? How did she know the locations of all of these keyholes? Instead, he chose to ask her, "Why were you here before?"

"Exploring, mostly, with an old friend," she said, but then bit her two lips together, as if she said something she didn't mean to.

Araceli couldn't have meant Dylan—he freely admitted he had never been to this world before. In fact, it only makes sense that she would have had other friends exploring the worlds with her since she had been on a journey of her own since before even meeting Dylan. He wondered whatever happened to him or her—Araceli's old friend.

"Do you trust me?" asked Araceli, holding a hand out to him, interrupting his thoughts.

"We're going down there?"

She nodded again.

Silas took in a deep breath. He did trust her—he trusted her implicitly. Araceli had never led them wrong; in fact, any danger they were ever in was sprung upon them, and never the direct result of Araceli's guidance. She knew her way around, she knew what she was talking about, and if there was anyone who could get these keyholes sealed and Sheridan defeated, it was Araceli.

He frowned. Why did _he_ have the Keyblade? Why not someone like Araceli?

Silas said, "Yes," and grabbed her hand. They jumped.

Silas and Araceli fell, fell, fell down the crater. At first, Silas screamed (and thought he probably sounded like a young girl by doing so). In no time, his scream turned to laughter. Whether it was terrified, nervous laughter or a genuine adrenaline-rush, he couldn't be sure. But he loved every second of it. He loved the fear. He _loved_ the fall.

It wasn't until they were less than twenty feet to the pit that Araceli lifted her staff in her left hand, and a strong gust of wind spun beneath their feet. The fall faded to a gentle float, and they daintily hovered to the very bottom of the crater, just outside the glowing border of the keyhole.

Silas's hair was all disheveled and wind-blown, as was Araceli's. She didn't smile or show any hint of adrenaline-junkie that Silas felt, but her cheeks were pink. She looked quite cute with a bit of blush to her face.

He laughed again, not quite letting go of her hand when they landed. "That was amazing! Whoo!" he shouted, lifting his Keyblade into the air with his other hand. "That was incredible! _You're_ incredible! How did you—"

Suddenly, he felt a brush on his lips. Araceli pulled her head backwards almost immediately after, and stared down at her feet.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I don't know why I did that."

Silas stammered, but still smiled, and took away his hand. "It's okay," he said, but was truly still trying to process what happened.

Araceli, not looking him in the eyes, tossed her staff between both of her hands. "You should be able to lock the keyhole, now.

Silas nodded, and pointed his Keyblade at the keyhole. They certainly _were_ close enough now. Somehow, the tiny light of his weapon was enough for even this enormous keyhole, and, with a glittering glow, it burst to life, and faded out of existence, just as the two keyholes before it had been locked.

"Excellent," said Araceli. After a pause, she said, "You know, you still have to name your Keyblade."

"Do people name their Keyblades?" he asked, and Araceli nodded.

He twisted it around in his hand for a moment. Every name he could think of—Thunder Bringer, Storm Cloud—sounded stupid in his head, and so would probably sound even stupider out loud. He did not know what to call this thing, until he heard something from the very core of his being—his heart (Nico's heart?) tell him "Ostro."

"Ostro," he said, which sounded much better than anything he could come up with. Silas wasn't a hundred percent sure it was an actual word, but he _was_ sure it came from Nico, and he trusted his knowledge more than anything.

 _Thanks, Nico_ , he thought.

"Ostro it is," Araceli said with another nod.

Silas was grinning ear-to-ear until a disappointing reality hit him like a falling boulder. "So, how do we get out of here?"


End file.
